• Clean Air & Sustainable Mobility

Rain in excess, but Delhi yet to get any good air day this year

NEW DELHI: While Delhi may have recorded five days that were categorised as ‘good’ according to the Air Quality Index in 2020, this year, despite the lockdown and regular showers, the city is yet to record such a day. Delhi may have received more than 500mm of rainfall in July, 2.4 times the normal for the month, but that didn’t clean the air enough for it to be ‘good’. Track the pollution level in your city A ‘good’ air AQI is 50 or below. The lowest rating recorded so far in the current monsoon season is 57, which is classified as 'satisfactory'. Experts said that other sources of local emissions, as well as gaseous pollutants such as CO, O3 and NO2 could be playing a key role even when the rain settled down the PM2.5 and PM10 pollutants. Rain In Excess, But Capital Yet To Get Any Good Air Day This Year Last year, Delhi recorded five ‘good’ air quality days: one in March during the Covid lockdown, and four in August during the monsoon period.

• Down To Earth

Parties must include clean air in their poll manifestos, say anti-pollution activists

Air quality data reported across six of the nine non-attainment cities in Punjab suggests that particulate matter (PM10) concentrations were beyond safe limits on more than 50 per cent of the days in the first half of 2021. Reacting to the SAD-BSP’s 13-point agenda for the 2022 polls, members of an anti-pollution NGO have urged all political parties to feature time-bound plans to tackle air pollution and public health issues prominently in their manifestos. A group of organisations, think tanks, civil society groups have joined hands to form ‘Clean Air Punjab’. The aim of this collective is to work alongside the state authorities to help achieve clean air by ensuring all the non-attainment cities across Punjab implement the ‘Clean Air Action Plan’, said an office-bearer of the NGO. The collective has expressed its displeasure with the Akali Dal–BSP manifesto, which was released on Tuesday as it failed to address the issue of deteriorating air quality in the state. Air quality data reported across six of the nine non-attainment cities in Punjab suggests that particulate matter (PM10) concentrations were beyond safe limits on more than 50 per cent of the days in the first half of 2021. The state also recorded 41,090 deaths due to air pollution in 2019, accounting for almost 19 per cent of all deaths, revealed a study by Down to Earth and Centre for Science and Environment titled ‘State of India’s Environment 2021’. Samita Kaur, citizen activist from Innovative Farmers Group Punjab, said that despite facing its worst health crisis due to air pollution, the authorities were still not ready to accept it. “The air quality in the state has been worsening to an extent where air pollution has now become a major killer. Even during the second wave of Covid-19 lockdown, when most industries were shut, Punjab’s air quality was still a serious matter of concern,” she said, adding that the states green regions like Fazilka and Rupnagar had an air quality index (AQI) of 113 and 129 respectively, which are well beyond safe standards. We need to accept that our state is in a health emergency and there is an immediate need for an intervention and promoting actions to reduce the prevalent severe air pollution. Hence, as members of Clean Air Punjab, we want to strongly urge all political parties to make air pollution management a priority in their election manifestos and to specify time-bound measures to protect public health from the harmful impacts of air pollution,” she stated.

• Down To Earth

Air pollution can't be ignored in poll manifestos: Clean Air Punjab

Chandigarh, Aug 4: Even as the season for poll manifestos seem to have begun in Punjab with the Akali Dal-Bahujan Samaj Party releasing its initial 13-point election agenda, members of 'Clean Air Punjab', which is a network of citizens and civil society Punjab also recorded 41,090 deaths due to air pollution in 2019, accounting for nearly 19 per cent of all deaths, said a Down to Earth and Centre for Science and Environment annual study titled 'State of India's Environment 2021'.->-> View it--> https://www.newkerala.com/news/2021/110717.htm

• Sustainable Mobility

How accessible and connected is our national capital – Delhi for its residents? Not very much, says new CSE study

Unplanned, low-income areas in Delhi have very limited access to affordable and efficient public transport services. Planned and richer areas are comparatively better connected, but are still not up to the mark. If all settlements of Delhi – planned and unplanned — are not equally well connected with public transport services and are not made accessible, the capital will fail to implement fully its sustainable, low-emission forms of travel (like walking, cycling or public transport). As per the estimates of the draft Delhi Master Plan 2041 (MPD 2041), the city’s population will be 27-30 million by 2014, and 50 per cent of this increase will happen due to migration. By then, Delhi would generate 46.2 million motorised trips daily. “If such a massive load of daily motorised travel trips are not shifted to public transport to achieve the MPD 2041 target of modal split of 80:20 in favour of public and shared transport, Delhi will remain locked in pollution and carbon trap,” says CSE executive director Anumita Roychowdhury. “This requires immediate improvement in neighbourhood scale accessibility to bus and metro services and minimisation of interchanges. The expectation of MPD 2041 that 50 per cent of Delhi’s population will be within the influence zone of mass transit by 2041 and mixed-use development will encourage shift towards public transport, can be fulfilled only if neighbourhood-level design and infrastructure improve for safe and efficient access,” she adds. Study methodology This CSE study is a ground-level assessment of infrastructure for accessibility in 16 settlements in the southern part of Delhi that include neighbourhoods of varying economic status. This assessment has a special focus on the vulnerable urban poor. The settlements have been selected based on the Master Plan of Delhi 2021 (MPD21) classification of settlements that are technically classified as “planned” and “unplanned”. These diverse settlements include unauthorised colonies that have been subsequently regularised such as Tughlakabad Extension, Tigri Extension, Govindpuri, Kalkaji, Khanpur, Pooth Kalan and Khirki Extension; resettlement colonies like Garhi and Zamrudpur in East of Kailash; and slum clusters like Jawaharlal Nehru Camp in Kalkaji. There are also villages that have become part of the urban system like Shahpur Jat and Tughlakabad village. This assessment also includes planned settlements with neigbourhoods of higher income groups including East of Kailash, Kailash Colony, Greater Kailash and Chittaranjan Park. While it is challenging to quantify the differences in absolute terms, indicators have been derived from national policies, guidelines, service-level benchmarks, the Ease of Living Index of the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), and a few global indexes related to liveability and accessibility – the aim was to broadly assess the qualitative differences between settlements. This is a rapid diagnostic study of equity of access, ease and affordability of movement and what determines access in different settlements. “These indicators bring out the relative differences in local conditions related to transport, mobility patterns and connectivity, status of infrastructure and services, accessibility, and the increase in interchanges due to poor connectivity that has a bearing on journey costs,” says Anannya Das, deputy programme manager with the sustainable mobility programme at CSE. Key findings of the study Quite predictably, the planned settlements and higher income neighbourhoods perform better on most criteria compared to unplanned settlements dominated by the poor. But even planned colonies fall short of the benchmark for accessibility as provided in guidelines and standards and are deficient in public transport-oriented design. This is inciting dependence on personal vehicles in these neighbourhoods. Unplanned colonies, on the other hand, are hugely burdened with legacy problems as they have grown incrementally and without any planning support. They are already very densely built with hugely constrained infrastructure. There is barely any space left to manoeuvre as all vacant and open spaces have ceased to exist. The indicative and relative benchmarking bring out the variance as follows: Comparison of locational advantages and disadvantages of settlements shows that planned settlements are 2.8 times better placed than unplanned settlements. Planned areas have, on an average, 1.6 times more road space and 1.4 times more open qualitative spaces. On the criteria of ‘interface between settlement and the city’, planned settlements are about 1.3 times better connected than low-income unplanned settlements. Again, within the low-income settlements, planned low-income settlements have relatively better chances of being located strategically in relation to a major economic hub and important locations within a city. In unplanned low-income settlements, inter-modal transfer requirement increases the waiting time for a mode by 1.1–1.6 times. Most importantly, this increases the cost of the journey. In fact, the monthly cost of transport increases by 1.5–3.5 times. On the criterion ‘quality and affordability of access to public transport services’, planned areas have 1.5 times better access to the connecting and boarding points of public transport systems like Metro stations and pick-up and drop-off stops of buses, than unplanned areas. Planned formal public transport network is more accessible in planned settlements. Low-income unplanned colonies depend on informal and shared IPT like Grameen Sewa to access other systems and services. This adds to the cost as well as the hardships faced by these settlements as these systems do not necessarily penetrate deep due to infrastructure limitations. These modes also have huge route restrictions. On the criterion of how people move and access services and amenities inside settlement clusters, most of the settlements do not have adequate amenities and services like schools, markets, ATMs, convenience stores, pharmacies, etc. within the neighbourhood. As densely built unplanned settlements have limited land availability, and the quality of infrastructure does not comply with applicable design standards, people are forced to depend on mobility services to access several services beyond the neighbourhood. This increases (motorised) transportation requirements as the services are not within walkable distances. In fact, planned areas have 1.3 times better intra-neighbourhood accessibility than unplanned areas. On the criterion of ‘status of accessibility infrastructure within neighbourhoods’, all areas fall short of meeting the requirements of infrastructure for all street activities for safe access and connectivity. Unplanned areas are impacted more. Higher-income planned settlements have about 1.8 time more infrastructure than unplanned settlements. Streets of high-income areas are 1.7 times more walkable, IPT penetration in these areas is 1.9 times higher, and the sense of safety is 1.7 times higher. Next steps A different policy approach for retrofitting change to improve access and services will be needed in settlements. Even though several policies have emerged that have bearing on equitable urban planning including National Habitat Standards, Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Policy, Service-level Benchmarks at the Central level and Delhi Master Plan integrating several sustainability criteria, the framework for implementation is weak. This requires policy focus on local area improvement to make accessibility across settlements – both unplanned and unplanned — more efficient and affordable. Frame guidelines and mandate for improving streets and access infrastructure in both planned and unplanned low-income settlements: Need settlement-wise and neighbourhood-wise plans for improving accessibility and connectivity. Work towards a city-wide deployment of integrated and affordable public transport services that deeply penetrate and connect neighbourhoods efficiently. Integrate housing programmes with transport connectivity and accessibility requirements. Initiate data-driven action for targeted improvement in all settlements and for tracking data on geo-spatial attributes of settlements and from surveys on layouts, built-up areas, availability of open spaces, street and circulation networks, encroachments, mobility patterns, and level of public transport services. Encourage state governments and municipal corporations to create dedicated funds and institutional arrangement for local area improvements and infrastructure augmentation in the settlements.

• Clean Air & Sustainable Mobility

Need viable alternatives to stubble burning’

Govt. must step up eff orts to help farmers move away from toxic practice: experts With the Lok Sabha passing a Bill to formalise the Commission for Air Quality Management for National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas on Wednesday, experts said the government has to now speed up implementation of alternatives to stubble burning. The Centre, facing flak earlier this year from farmers protesting against the farm laws, had committed to removing a clause in the Air Commission Bill that would penalise farmers for burning stubble, an important contributor to noxious air quality. The current text of the Bill does away with this clause. Anumita Roychowdhury, head of Clean Air Programme at the Centre for Science and Environment, said it is unfair to fine farmers without giving them viable alternatives. Three solutions “If just by penalising farmers, stubble burning could be stopped, we should have been able to end it by now. We have evidence that in areas where alternatives are implemented, fire incidents have come down,” she said, The government should instead focus on alternative solutions to burning, she said. “There are three main solutions to stubble burning: in-situ treatment of stubble, ex-situ treatment, and changing cropping pattern. The last one being the deeper and more fundamental solution. For in-situ management, the government is currently giving equipment to farmers to mix the stubble back into the soil, so that they do not have to burn it, but everyone is not getting these machines. The government should ensure their availability to everyone. Similarly, in ex-situ management, some companies have started collecting stubble for their use, but we need more action on this front,” she said. Ms. Roychowdhury said farmers, especially small and marginal farmers, need support for adoption of in-situ strategies, to mulch the straw into the soil and not burn it. “Penalty without access to solutions does not work.” Polash Mukerjee, Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, said farmers burn stubble as other methods are expensive and they have less time before the next sowing season. “Imposing a fine is not going to work in our socio-economic conditions for curbing stubble burning. We need to focus on alternative solutions,” he said. But he said that the current development is bad in terms of deterrence to burn stubble. “Already there is economic distress and now there is no deterrence, so the farm fires could go up during this year’s harvest season,” he said.

• Down To Earth

AGRI TO ‘AGGRO’? Agitating ryots mull political party to fight Assembly poll

he writing is beginning to appear on the walls. With Punjab going to the polls next year and political parties yet to develop a road map that would propel them to the seat of power in the state, farmer unions have begun asserting themselves by continuing their siege of toll plazas to protest the three farm laws of the Centre. While the protests are mostly centred in the Malwa region of the state, especially in Sangrur and Barnala districts, they are expected to spread across the state in the next few months. The polls in Punjab are likely to held in February or March next year. The protests at the moment are being spearheaded by farmer unions under the banner of the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM) and the Bhartiya Kisan Union (Ekta-Ugrahan). Petrol pump premises belonging to a large corporate house are also being targeted. According to the Sangrur block chief of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (Ekta-Ugrahan), Gobinder Singh, the farmers will continue their protests outside the premises of the corporate houses till the central government repeals the farm laws. “When people fight for a cause they have to face some losses on other fronts. We are prepared for that. The farm laws have to be repealed,” he added. While most farm unions have still not publicly announced their desire to float a political party to jointly contest the assembly poll, some favour the idea. “We are simple farmers who have always been led either by the promises of the Congress or the Shiromani Akali Dal. But we have seen no change in our lives. It is time for us to decide our future for ourselves and not for political parties. That can only happen if we form a party and get into the assembly or parliament and raise our voices,” explained Amarjit Singh from Gadhera in Fatehgarh Sahib. Amarjit was not alone. Buta Singh from Rampura Phul is vociferous over the need for a farmer political party to raise their voices in the assembly. “I have raised the issue of our problems and that the farm laws will spell doom for the farming community in front of the political parties, but the leaders simply ignore our fears. I want the farmer unions to get united and float a political party for the next election,” he explained. While the Shiromani Akali Dal has stitched an alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party, some farm unions have begun courting the Dalit population in the state with an eye on the assembly poll. Dalits comprise over 30 per cent of the population in Punjab and have traditionally been voting for the Congress or the Shiromani Akali Dal. Only a little over three per cent own farmlands in the state. “There will be only one political party in Punjab the day Dalits and farmers join hands. We are seriously looking at the possibility in the future. It may not materialise in the next election. But farmers will decide on who will lead the state and country,” a farm leader said requesting anonymity. ‘KISAAN’ word red herring in Rajya Sabha NEW DELHI: Like a bull charging at a red cloth, Deputy Chairman Harivansh Singh on Wednesday was on the offensive at the use of the word "Kisaan" in the Rajya Sabha by the Opposition members, who were angry at Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu agreeing in the morning to allow debates on the farmers' issues and price rise as a deal with the Government but did not put them on priority in the afternoon session. He adjourned the House for 15 minutes due to ruckus in between, but rushed through passage of three official Bills with a semblance of the debate for 10 minutes each instead of two to three hours allotted by the House business advisory committee (BAC) as announced by the Chairman. Within 75 minutes all three Bills were passed before the House was adjourned for the day. The deputy chairman cut short the Opposition members’ repeatedly on the ground that they were not speaking on the subject since they uttered the word "Kisaan" while speaking on the three Bills. —Our Bureau FPJ VIEW Quite understandably, the farmers, albeit a section of them, are thinking of launching their own political party as they have “realised” their own political party will be their “voice” in Parliament. The suicide rate in the deeply stressed farm sector accounted for 7.4% of the total suicides in the country, resulting in deaths of 5,957 farmers and 4,324 farm labourers, the NCRB said in a latest report. Over 28 farmers and farm labourers die by suicide in India every day, as per the 2021 State of India’s Environment (SoE) report — an annual brought out by Down To Earth in association with Delhi-based non-profit Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). Farmers have started realising their potential “politically”. Dalits comprise over 30% of the population in Punjab and have traditionally been voting for the Congress or the Shiromani Akali Dal. Only a little over 3% own farmlands in the state. So, it is high time, politicians should stop underestimating them and people in power should realise the strength of the farmers’ political party. —Robin Roy Oppn agrees to debate on 7 bills The daily efforts of RS chairman M Venkaiah Naidu have at last succeeded in persuading the oppn parties to debate 7 govt bills, mostly already cleared by LS. The deal was struck after the govt in turn agreed to a discus­sion on a notice by 2 Kerala MPs — CPI’s Binoy Viswam, 65, and Loktantrik Janata Dal’s MV Shre­yams Kumar, 54, for annul­ling Feb’s new IT Rules, manda­ting social media and OTT platforms to set up a grievance redressal me­ch­anism for the users and emp­owering the govt to control them. —Our Bureau Pegasus debate: Oppn parties unite in Houses Our Bureau / New Delhi Eigtheen leaders of the Opposition parties on Wednesday took a “firm and united” stand on the discussion first on Pegasus issue in both Houses of Parliament since it has the national security dimensions and then only the discussion on the farmers’ issue. In a joint statement, they also unequivocally convened that the discussion on the farmers’ issues and agitations arising from the three anti-farmers and black agri laws enacted by Parliament last September should follow the discussion on Pegasus. “It is unfortunate that the government has unleashed misleading campaign to malign the combined Opposition and blame it for the continued disruption in Parliament. The responsibility for the deadlock lies squarely at the doorsteps of the government, which remains arrogant and obdurate and refuses to accept the Opposition’s demand for an informed debate in both the Houses,” the joint statement said. In Parliament -- Parliament clears LLP amendment bill, decriminalises provisions -- BJP leader Roopa Ganguly broke down, asks TMC why not discuss in Parliament on women rape issue, murder of BJP workers in West Bengal -- LS adjourned till Thursday amid oppn protests; 2 bills passed -- RS adjourned till Thursday amid protest, passes AERA bill -- 3 Bills passed in 45 minutes in RS on Wednesday -- 680 committed suicides in CAPFs in last six years: Govt to RS -- 1,948 arrested, 34 convicted under UAPA in 2019: Govt tells RS -- RS passes Deposit Insurance & Credit Guarantee Corporation (Amendment) Bill -- AI accumulated losses of about Rs70,820 crore till March 31, 2020: Govt -- 4,046 applications of Hindus for citizenship still pending; 4,171 given Indian nationality under old law 6 Trinamool lawmakers suspended Kolkata: Six TMC Rajya Sabha MP were suspended for a day over allegedly disorderly behavior in the House. According to Rajya Sabha sources, despite asking the TMC MPs to behave in the House, the TMC MPs holding placards jumped into the Well of the House demanding discussion on Snooping scam, repealing of farm laws and the on the constant price hike on petroleum products. “TMC MP’s Mausam Noor, Abir Ranjan Biswas, Dola Sen, Arpita Ghosh, Santa Chetri and Nadimul Haque were asked to withdraw themselves from the proceedings of the House for the day for disorderly behavior and disobeying the chair,” read the notice of Rajya Sabha. —Our Correspondent Kisan Sansad calls experts on MSP NEW DELHI: The Kisan Sansad, running parallel to Parliament at the Jantar Mantar road since last week, on Wednesday heard the eminent economists and experts as “guests of the House” for the next 2 days on the legal guarantee of the MSP the farmers get from the govt for their produces. The farmers noted the promise of PM Modi to double their income by 2022 seems to be yet another “jumla” (false claim) as they are not yet getting the remunerative prices to cover all expenses incurred in the crops they produce. Those, who turned up at the Sansad included experts like Dr Devinder Sharma, Dr Sucha Singh Gill and Dr RS Ghuman, the SKM said in a statement issued jointly by Balbir Singh Rajewal, Dr Darshan Pal, Gurnam Singh Charuni, Hannan Mollah, Jagjit Singh Dallewal, among others.

• Down To Earth

CSE Report: लाॅकडाउन में नहीं सुधरी नदियों की जल गुणवत्ता, गंगा सहित चार नदियां गंदी हुईं, सात नदियों में नहीं बदला जल गुणवत्ता

रह्मपुत्र एकमात्र ऐसी नदी रही जो लाॅकडाउन के दौरान स्नान के लिए सौ फीसद उपयुक्त हो गई। पहले इसकी गुणवत्ता 87.5.फीसद थी। सीएसई की रिपोर्ट के मुताबिक लाॅकडाउन के दौरान इन नदियों में जो सीवेज गया वह या तो अनुपचारित था या आंशिक रूप से उपचारित। संजीव गुप्ता, नई दिल्ली। दावे भले ही चाहे जो किए गए हों, लेकिन सच यह है कि 2020 के कोविड-19 लाकडाउन के दौरान भी नदियों के पानी की गुणवत्ता में सुधार नहीं हुआ। सेंटर फार साइंस एंड एन्वायरमेंट (सीएसई) की हाल ही में जारी रिपोर्ट 'स्टेट आफ इंडियाज एन्वायरमेंट इन फिगर 2021' ने सच सामने ला दिया है। यह रिपोर्ट बताती है कि भारत की 19 प्रमुख नदियों के पानी की गुणवत्ता में लाॅकडाउन के दौरान कोई उल्लेखनीय सुधार नहीं हुआ, जबकि गंगा सहित पांच नदियां तो और भी गंदी हो गईं। तीन नदियों में जल गुणवत्ता अपरिवर्तित रही तीन नदियों में पानी की गुणवत्ता अपरिवर्तित रही। सिर्फ पांच नदियों में लाकडाउन से पूर्व और लाकडाउन अवधि के दौरान स्नान के लिए प्राथमिक जल गुणवत्ता मानदंड का 100 फीसद अनुपालन दिखा। ब्रह्मपुत्र स्नान के लिए सौ फीसद उपयुक्त ब्रह्मपुत्र एकमात्र ऐसी नदी रही जो लाॅकडाउन के दौरान स्नान के लिए सौ फीसद उपयुक्त हो गई। पहले इसकी गुणवत्ता 87.5.फीसद थी। यह रिपोर्ट इस प्रचलित अवधारणा का भी खंडन करती है कि महामारी नदियों के लिए सार्वभौमिक रूप से अच्छी रही है। सीएसई रिपोर्ट: लाॅकडाउन के दौरान सतही जल निकायों के जैविक प्रदूषण में कमी आई सीएसई की रिपोर्ट के मुताबिक लाॅकडाउन के दौरान इन नदियों में जो सीवेज गया, वह या तो अनुपचारित था या आंशिक रूप से उपचारित। जिन नदियों की जलीय गुणवत्ता में थोड़ा बहुत सुधार हुआ, उसका कारण लगभग सभी उद्योगों के बंद होने से न्यूनतम औद्योगिक अपशिष्ट निर्वहन, पूजा सामग्री और कचरे के निपटान से जुड़ी कोई मानवीय गतिविधि नहीं होना, स्नान, कपड़े धोना, वाहन धोना और मवेशियों को नहलाने जैसी गतिविधियां न होना रहा। इन्हीं सब कारणों से सतही जल निकायों के जैविक प्रदूषण में कमी आई। सीबीआई ने न्यायाधीशों के खिलाफ मानहानिकारक पोस्‍ट डालने के मामले में पांच लोगों को गिरफ्तार किया है। न्‍यायधीशों पर मानहानिकारक पोस्‍ट डालने के मामले में एक्‍शन में सीबीआई, पांच गिरफ्तार, कुछ माननीयों की भूमिका की जांच यह भी पढ़ें इन नदियों की गुणवत्ता हुई बदतर लाॅकडाउन से पूर्व और बाद की गुणवत्ता स्थिति (फीसद में) 1. चंबल 75 46.15 2. ब्यास 100 95.45 3. सतलुज 87.1 78.30 4. गंगा 64.6 46.2 5. स्वर्णरेखा 80 55.33 इन नदियों की गुणवत्ता रही अपरिवर्तित 1. घग्घर 0 0 भूपेश बघेल ने गजेंद्र सिंह शेखावत को दिया आश्वासन- छत्तीसगढ़ में सितंबर 2023 तक हर घर होगा जल भूपेश बघेल ने गजेंद्र सिंह शेखावत को दिया आश्वासन- छत्तीसगढ़ में सितंबर 2023 तक हर घर होगा जल यह भी पढ़ें 2. साबरमती 55.55 55.55 3. माही 92.85 92.85 इनकी जल गुणवत्ता में हुआ मामूली सुधार 1. यमुना 42.8 66.7 2. तापी 77.8 87.50 3. कृष्णा 84.61 94.44 4. कावेरी 90.47 96.96 5. गोदावरी 65.78 78.37 इन नदियों का पानी लाॅकडाउन से पहले और बाद में भी नहाने के लिए सौ फीसद उपयुक्त था

• Renewable Energy

Tangled Wires: Preparing India’s Power Sector for the Clean Energy Transition

Almost none of the world’s largest polluters have enacted policies compatible with the Paris Agreement’s target of limiting global warming to within 2 degrees Celsius, a threshold past which climate disruption is projected to become even more frequent, severe, and unpredictable. Fortunately, despite the absence of adequate government support, renewable energy has grown at an astonishing pace in recent years thanks to its plummeting cost. India, for example, has more than doubled its stock of wind and solar power in the last five years, driven less by sustainability concerns than by clean energy’s potential for cost-effectively meeting citizens’ pressing development needs. However, the low prices of wind and solar projects disguise the structural costs renewable energy poses for grids when deployed at larger scales. The intermittent, unpredictable nature of the electricity generated by such technologies—in contrast to the stable, on-demand flow of power from traditional fossil fuel generation—requires fundamental changes to how countries invest in and operate their grids. For India, one of the most important steps for coping with the variability of these new sources of energy will be better coordination of the flow of power between the country’s disparate state-run grids. By increasing the volume of energy traded between state utilities, periods of surplus power in one region can compensate for deficits in others, making for a more stable and reliable supply of renewable energy—one that can better displace expensive and polluting fossil fuels. Jonathan Kay Jonathan Kay is a nonresident research assistant in the Carnegie South Asia Program. He was previously a James C. Gaither Junior Fellow. Yet, while such reforms would be difficult under the best of circumstances, they will be particularly challenging given the unique dysfunctions of India’s power sector. With its politically compromised, perennially loss-making electricity distribution companies already struggling to keep the lights on, bolder change appears unlikely. Deeper reforms to India’s power sector are therefore prerequisites to adopting solutions like regional coordination that can ensure the continued growth of renewable energy. The good news is that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s national popularity and the dominance of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the state level offer the country’s leaders an opportunity to reform the power sector where others have failed. But to take advantage of this opening, Modi must go beyond his modus operandi by investing in incremental institutional solutions rather than one-and-done technical fixes and by serving as a coordinator for India’s states rather than legislating by central fiat. Deeper reforms enabling India to maintain its rapid expansion of renewable energy not only would provide clean, low-cost power to its people but also would help the world offset the failings of more laggard countries, perhaps even putting back within reach the Paris Agreement’s more aggressive target of keeping global warming to within 1.5 degrees Celsius. But the hardest part of this ambitious task lies ahead—in ending the vicious cycles that have plagued India’s power sector for decades. Introduction India’s spectacular embrace of renewable energy is a rare reason for optimism in the fight against climate change. The world’s third-largest carbon emitter has more than doubled its stock of wind and solar power in the last five years, making it one of the only countries in the world whose policies appear compatible with the Paris Agreement’s target of limiting global warming to within 2 degrees Celsius—a threshold past which climate disruption is projected to become even more frequent, severe, and unpredictable.1 Yet the hardest part is still to come. Fossil fuels like coal, which currently accounts for a majority of India’s power-generating capacity, produce a stable and predictable stream of on-demand power. By contrast, power generation from wind and solar energy is more variable and unpredictable: wind turbines only generate electricity when the wind is blowing, and solar panels only generate electricity when the sun is shining. As a result, grid operators may not be able to fully rely on these forms of variable renewable energy, forcing them to turn back to fossil fuel generation. This challenge increases emissions and costs in the short term and slows the buildout of renewable energy in the long term. Coping with variable renewable energy like wind and solar will therefore require deeper changes to how India manages its grid. One of the most important solutions will also be one of the most difficult: the integration of the country’s disparate state-run electricity grids into a more coordinated system capable of using periods of surplus power in one region to compensate for deficits in another. In this way, variable renewable energy can more efficiently service larger geographic areas and more reliably displace expensive and polluting fossil fuels. However, while such reforms would be difficult under the best of circumstances, they will be particularly challenging given the unique dysfunctions of India’s power sector. A long history of politicians manipulating power distribution companies for the sake of short-term electoral objectives has compromised utilities’ finances and the independence they need to undertake structural reform. Without addressing these more fundamental problems, clean energy–enabling solutions like regional coordination are unlikely to succeed. Fortunately, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s national popularity and the dominance of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the state level offer the country’s ruling coalition an opportunity to reform the power sector where others have failed. To take advantage of this opening, however, Modi must go beyond his modus operandi, investing in incremental institutional solutions rather than one-and-done technical fixes and serving as a coordinator for India’s states rather than legislating by central fiat. One potential solution would be to organize a mutually reinforcing package of state-level power sector reforms undertaken by a coalition of the willing formed around a core of BJP-led state governments where Modi can use his personal influence to ensure follow-through. Such a reform package would include the narrower task of encouraging increased regional coordination of energy exchange as well as a broader, complementary set of reforms focused on the pathologies of the distribution companies themselves. Modi and the BJP have strong incentives to invest in such overdue changes. Enabling India’s clean energy transition through comprehensive power sector reform would complement other components of the BJP’s agenda, including support for India’s domestic manufacturing sector and the electrification of rural households. Perhaps most importantly, while India’s adoption of renewable energy to date has been primarily motivated by development concerns rather than sustainability, that might change as the impacts of climate change grow more severe—particularly given the country’s heightened vulnerability to climate change due to its reliance on agriculture, proximity to rising sea levels, and high levels of poverty. Deeper reforms enabling India to maintain its rapid expansion of renewable energy not only would provide clean, low-cost power to its people but also would help the world offset the failings of more laggard countries, perhaps even putting back within reach the Paris Agreement’s more aggressive target of keeping global warming to within 1.5 degrees Celsius. But the hardest part of this ambitious task lies ahead—in ending the vicious cycles that have plagued India’s power sector for decades. A New Era of Intermittent Energy India has long refused in international negotiations on climate change to adopt specific commitments to reduce its carbon emissions, arguing that it and other developing countries should not have to respond as rapidly as wealthy industrialized nations given the former’s pressing development needs and low share of historical emissions.2 Yet despite Western countries’ fears that India would become a “spoiler” for international cooperation on climate change, New Delhi’s development-first stance has proved compatible with a rapid shift toward decarbonizing its energy sector, which constitutes the single largest source of its carbon emissions.3 Installation of new generating capacity for renewable energy in India has outpaced that of fossil fuels in recent years, making the country home to the fifth-largest supply of renewable energy in the world.4 New Delhi recently set its sights on further expanding its supply of renewable energy to 450 gigawatts by 2030 (see figure 1)—a number that would constitute a majority of its total energy capacity and be roughly equal to the current combined renewable energy resources of the United States, Japan, and France.5 Consistent with its international rhetoric, India’s embrace of clean energy has been motivated more by developmental concerns than by sustainability per se; climate change ranks low among Indian voters’ priorities.6 The plummeting cost of solar and wind energy have made renewables cheaper than fossil fuels in most states, offering the chance to simultaneously improve citizens’ electricity access, throw a lifeline to India’s bankrupt public utilities, and slow the growth of India’s carbon emissions. However, India’s current approach to managing its grid means that this synergy may not last. The more wind and solar power that the country installs, the harder and more expensive such energy will be to use, threatening to put the brakes on the nation’s transition to clean energy. Solar and wind energy pose a problem that traditional forms of fossil fuel generation do not: intermittency. Whereas coal or natural gas power produce a stable, continuous flow of electricity, solar panels only generate power when the sun is shining, and wind turbines only generate power when the wind is blowing. Wind and solar generators therefore are expected to stay idle for portions of the day and year. However, while much of this variation obeys certain trends—solar energy generates the most power when the sun nears its zenith, for example, while India’s wind output peaks during monsoon season—the precise scale of such variation is unpredictable. When a cloud bank passes above a solar farm or a dying wind makes the turbines go still, grid operators must find a replacement source of energy. The typical solution is to turn to more reliable forms of power generation like fossil fuels that can produce power on demand. Yet because such power plants cannot be brought online or off-line instantly or without cost, grid operators prefer to keep a stream of stable fossil fuel generation on and running for hours or days at a time as a backstop to the vicissitudes of variable renewable energy (VRE). The downside of this strategy is that, when wind and solar energy hits their peaks, the grid may already be getting all the energy it needs from the fossil fuel backstop. When this happens, VRE generators are consequently curtailed, prevented from selling their energy to the grid. The immediate environmental cost of curtailment is obvious: clean VRE that could be displacing polluting fossil fuels is prevented from doing so. Furthermore, in the long term, the losses from such curtailment to solar and wind operators’ profits may prevent them from constructing more generation capacity going forward. Curtailment also raises the price of energy for consumers since, unlike coal or natural gas, the fuel for VRE—sunlight and wind—is free. Therefore, every additional megawatt of power generated at these facilities is produced at an extremely low marginal cost.7 Finally, during periods when VRE can meet a majority of energy demand, the fossil fuel plants stabilizing the grid decrease their output by running at lower factor capacities, which usually makes them even more inefficient, expensive, and polluting to operate than usual.8 Without measures to adapt, these problems will only worsen as India grows the share of VRE capacity on its grid from 18 percent today to a target of over 40 percent by 2030 (according to International Energy Agency projections).9 While the total generating capacity available to the country’s grid at peak solar and wind output—say, on a gusty spring day with clear skies—might increase, the floor of fossil fuel generation needed to fill in the gap when VRE approaches nil remains largely the same. This means that increasing amounts of VRE are competing to meet the same energy demand left over after the fossil fuel backstop takes its share—unless the fossil fuel backstop itself can be reduced. Addressing Variability Through Regional Coordination While some amount of curtailment is unavoidable at higher levels of VRE, there are several strategies to minimize it. One solution is to ensure that the grid enjoys a more stable and reliable supply of renewable energy in the first place by coordinating energy supply over as wide a geographic area as possible. Transmission lines connect the whole of India into a single national grid. Responsibility for the electricity that passes through that grid, however, largely rests with the states, most of whom give responsibility for procuring and distributing electricity to state-owned power distribution companies, or discoms.10 Discoms typically purchase the bulk of their power through one-on-one, long-term contracts with particular generating facilities within their own state. One problem with this approach is that, at the level of a single state, the weather conditions that affect VRE output change rapidly, meaning that supplies of wind or solar energy can peak or fall dramatically in a matter of minutes or seconds. These rapid fluctuations force each state’s grid operators to maintain a larger cushion of fossil fuel generation to cope with unexpected drops in VRE output. However, the average meteorological conditions experienced across several states are more predictable, with momentary troughs in one area typically balanced by momentary peaks in another. If grid operators were to coordinate to efficiently source and dispatch generation capacity across a larger geographic area, they would be able to draw from a larger and more stable pool of VRE—and thus turn off some of their fossil fuel plants. Regional coordination also helps diversify the kinds of renewable energy in the grid by allowing the strengths of some states to complement the weaknesses of others. Some states may enjoy plentiful supplies of solar energy but little in the way of wind power, for example, or large amounts of nuclear energy or hydropower but less in the way of VRE (see figures 2a and 2b). With regional coordination, however, solar power concentrated in India’s south and west can be sent north and east during the day and wind power from turbines in coastal states can be sent inland at night. By enabling one region’s surplus to meet another region’s shortfall, VRE curtailment in states with a temporary excess of wind or solar power can be reduced, and states with insufficient VRE can avoid turning on new fossil fuel capacity.11 Finally, regional coordination could make more efficient use of the non-VRE backstop itself. Hydropower from the mountains of northern India, for instance—a relatively on-demand form of renewable energy—could in some cases replace fossil fuels in the lowlands as grid stabilizers over the course of the day. Perhaps most important in the short term, a larger fleet of older coal plants could be replaced by a smaller fleet of newer ones. These newer plants would be capable of more easily and quickly reducing their power output during peak VRE generation, reducing curtailment of wind and solar energy, while also running at more efficient factor capacities during troughs in VRE generation, reducing emissions and costs.12 The benefits of regional coordination are obvious, and several studies have found such coordination to be one of the most important steps in the next decade for reducing India’s curtailment of VRE.13 Nevertheless, despite a proliferation in recent years of forums for trading energy across state lines, states continue to procure the vast majority of their energy from in-state generators.14 For example, as things stand now, if Tamil Nadu were to find itself curtailing a surplus of wind energy in the same moment that adjacent Karnataka were ramping up coal production to meet an energy deficit, the two states likely wouldn’t exchange power. As a result, Karnataka would pay for expensive and polluting coal power, and wind farm operators in Tamil Nadu would shut off their clean energy rather than making a profit. Each state would lose money and pollute more. One possible obstacle to regional coordination is cost: accommodating an increased flow of electricity between states and regions without congestion requires significant investments in transmission infrastructure.15 However, this investment would likely be more than offset by the more efficient use of generation capacity—and greater use of cheap renewable energy—that increased energy exchange between states would enable.16 The deeper obstacle to regional coordination is precisely that, however much money such coordination might save in the long run, state utilities have even stronger incentives to prioritize shorter-term interests—including by maintaining personalized control over energy dispatch rather than committing themselves to a more independent and centralized system. The reasons for this disconnect lie in a decades-long history of political capture and financial disarray that has left India’s power companies tools of politics first and effective utilities second. Distribution Dysfunction One of the state’s foremost priorities in India’s early years as an independent country was the provision of electricity to its citizens through the expansion of its grid and investment in new generation capacity. Fortunately, in many states, cheap coal and hydropower were plentiful. Yet the combination of this natural abundance and the importance of electricity to India’s citizens created a huge temptation for states to give out electricity for free to shore up voters’ support. The power sector quickly became an instrument of mass patronage.17 Before long, as India’s electricity demand grew, states could no longer afford to offer steep electricity subsidies while still paying to lay down new transmission lines and build new power plants. Yet voters had grown used to receiving these subsidies, and politicians had grown used to giving them out to win support from key constituencies. Consequently, rather than raise prices, most states turned to a system called cross-subsidization: charging industrial consumers like factories more for their power and using the profits to maintain subsidies for key voting blocs like farmers. Yet this strategy, too, soon ran into problems. For one thing, some industrial consumers disconnected from the grid entirely, generating their own electricity from on-location power plants, which meant they were no longer financing consumer subsidies.18 Additionally, by raising the cost of doing business, the cross-subsidy regime likely depressed the growth of the country’s industrial sector itself, and thus its ability to pay inflated electricity bills.19 Commandeered by politicians and severed from the accountability of market forces, the discoms’ operating losses have mounted over the years, forcing them to cut back on investments in generation, the grid, and consumer billing infrastructure. This state of affairs has only led to further losses: even after years of attempted reforms, more than one-fifth of the power sent to Indian consumers today is either lost en route due to poor distribution infrastructure or never billed at all, roughly twice the share in other South Asian countries like Bangladesh or Sri Lanka and four times that in the United States or China.20 Inadequate investment has also led to chronic power shortages, which themselves have in some cases been triaged in favor of key electoral constituencies.21 In principle, both politicians and consumers have incentives to reform the system. Massive losses in the power sector strain India’s public finances, cut into funding for other programs, and ultimately depress economic growth. Meanwhile, consumers may get subsidized electricity, but only in exchange for frequent blackouts. However, apart from a few success stories—including in Gujarat under the leadership of then chief minister Modi—reforms have proved elusive, and a vicious cycle of discom debt and low-quality power has endured.22 One problem is credibility. Investing in power infrastructure often requires immediate increases in prices but may take years to yield any results, so consumers have to believe that governments will actually deliver on their promises of higher quality power in the future. Yet governments often either lack the discipline to think on this kind of time horizon or simply worry that the voters will fail to remain committed to such an arrangement.23 Indeed, many would-be reformers have been ejected from office before their work could be completed, only to see the next ruling party return to the old cross-subsidies system.24 As a result, the condition of most states’ power sectors has remained largely unchanged for decades. The most comprehensive study to date of the state politics of energy distribution in India, Mapping Power, concluded that there is no single solution to these vicious cycles, or even necessary conditions for success.25 When states enjoy the financial cushion of cheap power or plentiful revenue from industrial consumers, for example, they may be better able to invest in new infrastructure without immediately increasing the prices consumers pay for electricity, but they may also feel less pressure to reform in the first place.26 The electoral landscape also matters: the presence of substantial numbers of urban or industrial customers willing to pay more for high-quality electricity or the absence of well-organized farmers’ movements with incentives to retain subsidies may both be conducive to reform.27 However, states without these conditions have sometimes succeeded in reforming where states enjoying both conditions have failed.28 Meanwhile, states with stable political leadership may be more likely to reform than those experiencing frequent changes between ruling parties, where politicians have less latitude to think beyond the next election.29 Nevertheless, parties in power for several successive administrations can still fail to move the needle.30 The enduring dysfunction of India’s discoms is perhaps one of the most important barriers to the country’s economic development today, with poor-quality power acting as a drag on economic development while the power sector’s disastrous finances soak up public funds that could be used for more targeted investments or welfare initiatives.31 Furthermore, so long as discoms remain financially insolvent, politically compromised, and insulated from the pressure to turn a profit, they will also pose an obstacle to India meeting its renewable energy goals—starting with regional coordination. One general problem is that even if investments in the transmission infrastructure necessary to engage in regional coordination would be offset by savings over time, discoms often neglect long-term planning in favor of a short-term fixation on stopping the bleeding of revenue losses.32 Whether from a lack of foresight or a simple lack of funds, they might opt for solutions with lower upfront costs that are ultimately more expensive over their lifespan, such as building more coal plants than necessary, for example, rather than making the structural changes necessary to take full advantage of potential new renewable energy capacity. In such cases, solutions like regional coordination that require significant costs and efforts up front but pay for themselves over multiple administrations may never be seriously considered. Discoms also have more specific motivations to resist regional coordination and the increase in interstate energy trade it would entail. Remaining in exclusive relationships with instate power generators, for example, allows discoms to more easily delay or even default on their payments, a common practice for coping with their frequent revenue shortfalls.33 By contrast, most arrangements for regional coordination would require a timelier settlement of payments—within days rather than months—a prospect that, in turn, would require that discoms maintain more cash on hand than is currently standard practice.34 Similarly, while more centralized and coordinated systems of dispatch would typically require that discoms commit to projecting their energy demand in advance, doing so might make it more challenging for them to use another favored tool of financial triage: simply deciding not to provide electricity when it gets too expensive, and then in some cases choosing to win voters’ support by making special efforts to purchase and dispatch power to certain areas in the lead-up to elections.35 Finally, with few funds to spare, discoms’ tolerance for experimentation may be marginal. Investments in transmission, for instance, may take longer to pay for themselves than anticipated, further straining discoms’ balance sheets in the short term. Discoms also might run afoul of approaches to regional coordination that would require them to pay fines for differences between their projected and actual energy use. And some coordination arrangements might force discoms to pool their reserve generating capacity, potentially requiring states to maintain more robust generating reserves than is common practice in India or risk having other states’ lack of generating reserves prevent them from averting a blackout.36 Although arrangements can generally be designed to limit risk, decisionmakers may nevertheless fear punishment if their efforts at innovation result in conspicuous short-term failures. More to the point, they may believe that they have little to gain even if the risk were to pay off. This is perhaps the single most important obstacle to reforming the pathologies mentioned above: despite New Delhi’s regular clarion calls for reform, discoms face limited pressure to turn a profit. The obvious candidates to pressure discoms to improve their operational performance, including through innovations like regional coordination, would be the state electricity regulatory commissions (SERCs). However, many SERCs have seen their institutional capacity, independence, and legitimacy compromised by state governments determined to protect the cross-subsidy regime from being challenged (as one of the SERCs’ primary functions is to set electricity prices), limiting their ability to push discoms to undertake any reforms.37 Consumers, for their part, often see little relationship between the cost of electricity and the subsidized price they pay, which makes them less likely to push politicians to cut the discoms’ supply-side operating losses.38 Finally, while the central government can attempt to create incentives for improved discom performance, it has limited leverage: unless New Delhi is willing to allow the wholesale collapse of a state’s power sector, it must continue bailing out distribution companies regardless of whether the states themselves are to blame for their problems.39 Commentators have noted that past efforts have fallen short by “providing a carrot but not much by way of a stick.”40 In the next stage of its transition to clean energy, India needs efficiently run utilities that are capable and motivated enough to take on risks for the sake of their consumers, not discoms that are tools of patronage first and power companies second. But if states can barely survive under the status quo, more disruptive and structural reforms like regional coordination are unlikely to materialize. Business as usual and reactive policy will likely remain the safest option for individual state politicians and bureaucrats unless the will to reform can be built elsewhere. Breaking the Cycle Vicious cycles rarely end of their own accord. In most Indian states, the fundamental problems with the power sector have changed little in the two decades since the major reforms of the 1990s and early 2000s, and they will likely remained trapped in the same pattern of dysfunction unless they are disrupted by an external intervention. The obvious candidate for such an intervention is the central government. Yet past efforts—like the country’s 2003 Electricity Act, for example, or the 2015 Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana (UDAY) scheme—have typically done little to address the power sector’s core political problems, instead focusing on more technical or bureaucratic reforms like establishing new regulatory agencies or restructuring utilities’ debts.41 Such limited efforts have had limited results. UDAY, for example, the most recent major initiative, has had no discernable effect on a key metric of discom performance: the proportion of energy sent to customers for which no revenue is collected, a figure known as aggregate technical and commercial losses (see figure 3).42 Therefore, an alternative approach is necessary, one that begins with state-level rather than federal legislation and that sees the building of political will as a prerequisite to undertaking technical reforms. The ideal solution might follow in the footsteps of the 2017 Goods and Services Tax, a rare instance in which India’s central government and the states came together to implement a sweeping overhaul of a contentious economic issue over which both groups had jurisdiction.43 However, the tax overhaul was in some ways far more straightforward to negotiate than a reform of the states’ power sectors, which would likely require more nuanced efforts to tailor technical proposals and political strategies to the idiosyncrasies of particular state contexts.44 Furthermore, the central government might have ruined any chance at repeating its success by recently reneging on its commitments to compensate the states for their losses under the new fiscal scheme, an outcome that may have created lasting distrust between the two sides.45 Another solution would begin not with all of India but instead with lower-hanging fruit: a coalition of willing, reform-minded states. The primary candidates would be those ruled by members of Modi’s own party, the BJP—a plurality of states accounting for 38 percent of India’s GDP and 40 percent of its population (see figure 4).46 Modi’s unparalleled national popularity and unrivaled dominance within the ranks of the party give him substantial formal and informal influence over state BJP leaders, which could be used to convince them to adopt a more penetrating set of reforms to their power sectors with a degree of political will that past efforts lacked.47 First, Modi could focus on the narrower task of encouraging—or, in the case of BJP-led states, actively pressuring—state governments to step up their engagement with interstate energy markets. These transitions could entail a vast range of possible governance options, from schemes largely retaining state primacy over energy dispatch to more market-based and centralized systems.48 For example, at first, states might choose to continue managing much of their scheduling and dispatch unilaterally, offering only a smaller share of their total fleet of generators up for coordination with other states. Eventually, as states build trust in and capacity for the system and see the benefits of increased cooperation, they might gradually move to a more centralized and market-based system in which state authorities play less of a role.49 This proposal would likely be an easier sell than a direct shift to a national, purely market-based system of power dispatch, as India’s Central Energy Regulatory Commission has recently proposed.50 However, an explicit attempt at regional coordination would, for all the reasons discussed above, be best complemented by a second level of reform focused on fixing the distribution companies themselves. Several policies have proven promising for unraveling the cross-subsidy regime. Participating states might upgrade their feeders, for example, so as to better monitor and curb the energy use of those receiving subsidized electricity, an effort the central government has offered to help fund through its most recent scheme for discom reform.51 They might also replace electricity subsidies with direct cash transfers so that welfare to key constituencies no longer directly prevents the price of electricity from reflecting the cost of supply, a policy that has already proved itself successful in India for reforming subsidies for liquefied petroleum gas canisters.52 The reform package could even eschew specific policies in favor of broader objectives, such as maintaining an independent energy regulatory commission, the routes to which could then be worked out within particular states.53 Yet whatever the precise design, if these reforms were undertaken, as power distribution gradually began to develop a degree of financial stability and independence from individual politicians’ priorities, innovations like regional coordination would grow more attainable. Why would this approach succeed where past efforts have failed? For one thing, linking a coordinated agenda for state discom reform to a high-profile, ruling coalition–sponsored national initiative would go a long way toward addressing states’ credibility problem, leveraging Modi’s formidable reputation to convince voters that improvements in quality would actually accompany changes in the prices they pay. Additionally, a more comprehensive, mutually reinforcing package of reforms—including the encouragement of regional coordination, which would by necessity foster a certain amount of discipline and independence if successful—may have more staying power than any one policy in isolation.54 As important as the legislation itself would be, a change of mindset is perhaps most important. This would entail having the Prime Minister’s Office display adequate resolve to use Modi’s prominence both nationally and, more specifically, within the halls of power in BJP-ruled states to ensure that state governments actually implement their reforms—and that state leaders believe they have more to gain from a functional but independent power sector than a captured but broken one. Of course, such an approach would likely require that Modi set his sights lower than a comprehensive national initiative and instead begin only with a few states, such as those with strong BJP majorities where he wields the greatest influence or renewables-intensive states like Tamil Nadu that would have the most to gain from regional coordination arrangements enabling them to sell their electricity surplus. Yet even beginning with a smaller coalition would be enough. A critical mass of states proving the feasibility and benefits of reform would allow investors to vote with their feet and, in turn, would help voters to see the benefits of a better way, encouraging them to exert pressure on their own representatives. These regional arrangements could then gradually expand and deepen, eventually setting the stage for a truly national arrangement.55 Alongside its role as coordinator for the states, the Indian central government—as well as foreign donors and investors—will also have a clear role to play in national projects that can help make both discom reform in general and regional coordination in particular more attractive for states.56 One important area, particularly if energy trade between states increases, would be assisting with investment in transmission infrastructure, including the continued construction of “green energy corridors” capable of carrying large amounts of energy from one region to another.57 The central government could also help enable discom reform and clean energy adoption by bailing out and shutting down inefficient and polluting coal generators early; renegotiating expensive, long-term power purchase agreements; and investing in the technology to help grid operators more accurately predict the supply of VRE and engage with the logistics of market-based, coordinated dispatch.58 Yet while such initiatives—or the myriad regulatory changes necessary to adapt to a new, renewables-heavy energy landscape—are necessary, they are not sufficient absent reform to the discoms themselves. Conclusion While most of India’s actions to mitigate climate change so far have focused on development rather than sustainability concerns, this may change as the impacts of climate change grow more obvious. Mitigating climate change has often been described as a public good insofar as action by one country to curb its emissions benefits all countries.59 However, these benefits (in essence, foregone harms) do not and will not accrue to all countries equally: staying within the threshold of 2 degrees Celsius in global temperature increases targeted by the international community would still translate into rises in temperature far beyond 2 degrees in some countries—including in much of India. Different countries in turn will enjoy vastly different abilities to adapt to the climactic disruptions they do experience. Given the country’s high levels of poverty, reliance on agriculture (which depends in turn on the increasingly fragile monsoon season), and large tracts of land in areas susceptible to rising sea levels or drought, India is one of the countries in the world most vulnerable to climate change.60 Therefore, as crop yields decline, sea levels rise, and diseases like malaria and dengue fever encroach on warmer climes, India may grow less willing to defer climate mitigation in exchange for short-term economic gains and an increased risk of catastrophe in the future.61 At this point, climate policy as an end in itself may assume a more prominent role on the national stage—thereby making the dysfunction of the discoms even more of a political liability. Indeed, discoms’ dysfunction will likely sabotage enablers of clean energy beyond regional coordination as well. The same obstacles to intelligent investment in transmission infrastructure posed by the lack of fiscal space and capacity for long-term planning will likely present challenges for even more complicated and context-dependent decisions about investment in energy storage, for example, or when to shut down, upgrade, or replace older coal plants.62 The political rewards of controlling power dispatch, meanwhile, are already creating incentives to prevent the buildout of small rooftop solar panels—a sector that the Indian government hopes will grow to 40 gigawatts by 2022—since such resources would typically sell their energy directly to other consumers, thereby bypassing the discoms’ system of cross subsidies.63 In other words, unless India reforms its discoms, regional coordination will only be the first of many casualties in its green transition. The timing for reforming India’s power sector is propitious. The BJP has several years before the next general election, and reform is typically best done well in advance of an election when time remains in an administration for the benefits to materialize.64 Additionally, the country’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic presents a moment of crisis that the central government has already seized to enact painful reforms in other areas, such as privatization of public sector banks.65 Of course, the more organic approach to reform described above would require that Modi depart from his usual governance style, which has been large-scale, top-down, and centralized.66 Much of Modi’s popularity rests on efforts like his sweeping flagship welfare projects, which could be relatively easily designed and deployed from the Prime Minister’s Office without the need to gain wide buy-in from state governments or engage with the vagaries of institutional reform.67 By contrast, a state-based approach to power sector reform—even one that began only with BJP compatriots—would require flexibility, patience, and a willingness to engage with the specifics of each state context. Fortunately, Modi and the BJP have strong incentives to try. Indeed, Modi’s prominent embrace of renewable energy and targeting of ambitious milestones is a sign of his faith that a buildout of renewables will translate into an electoral payoff nationally, just as his push for renewables as chief minister of Gujarat paid off for him there. One incentive is that the power sector is a colossal strain on public finances and a drag on economic growth, which are important considerations for a ruling party whose popularity rests in large part on the promise of prosperity. Reforming discoms would also greatly increase the quality of electricity to India’s households, which may be a natural extension of Modi’s recent, largely successful campaign to electrify 100 percent of India’s villages.68 Energy security might be another motivation: reducing India’s substantial reliance on coal and gas imports by developing a domestic renewable energy manufacturing industry would accord with Modi’s push for Atmanirbhar Bharat (“self-reliant India”).69 This is to say nothing of issues that have not yet generated much electoral momentum but could be tapped into by a political entrepreneur as deft as Modi, such as the health benefits of clean energy. Pollution from coal plants is one of the primary drivers of India’s dismal air quality, for instance, which is estimated to lead to a staggering 2.5 million premature deaths each year.70 Contradictions between business as usual in India’s power sector and its green energy aspirations will only become more obvious as the country’s share of VRE generation capacity increases. Indeed, one study by the prominent Energy and Resources Institute found that, in the absence of flexibility-enabling changes such as regional coordination or battery storage, India’s target of 450 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030 would be entirely unrealistic.71 By contrast, reforming now—while there is still time and flexibility to plan for high shares of renewable energy rather than simply react to an imminent crisis of curtailment—would let India not just continue the meteoric growth of renewables but accelerate it. Acknowledgments The Carnegie Endowment is grateful to the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office for research funding that helped make the writing of this paper possible. The author is profoundly grateful to Milan Vaishnav, Rohit Chandra, Jessica Seddon, Kartikeya Singh, Megan DuBois, and Abigail Diebold for comments on earlier drafts. He also thanks Ryan DeVries and Amy Mellon for their design, editorial, and production assistance. Any errors are the author’s own. Notes 1 “Each Country’s Share of CO2 Emissions,” Union of Concerned Scientists, August 12, 2020, https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/each-countrys-share-co2-emissions; International Renewable Energy Agency, Renewable Capacity Statistics 2021 (Abu Dhabi: International Renewable Energy Agency, 2021), 13, 20; and “India—Current Policy Projections,” Climate Action Tracker, September 22, 2020, https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/india/current-policy-projections. 2 Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain, Global Warming in an Unequal World: A Case of Environmental Colonialism (New Delhi: Center for Science and Environment, 2000); Tejal Kanitkar and T. Jayaraman, “Equity in Long-Term Mitigation,” in India in a Warming World: Integrating Climate Change and Development, ed. Navroz K. Dubash (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019), 92–113; and Sandeep Sengupta, “India’s Engagement in Global Climate Negotiations From Rio to Paris,” in India in a Warming World, 114–141. 3 Ashok Lavasa, “Reaching Agreement in Paris: A Negotiator’s Perspective,” in India in a Warming World, 169–186; Dhanasree Jayaram, “From ‘Spoiler’ to ‘Bridging Nation’: The Reshaping of India’s Climate Diplomacy,” Revue Internationale et Stratégique 109 (2018): 181–190; and India: Third Biennial Update Report to The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (New Delhi: Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, 2021), 21. 4 Peter Zeniewski et al., India Energy Outlook 2021 (Paris: International Energy Agency, 2021), 38; and International Renewable Energy Agency, Renewable Capacity Statistics 2021, 2–4. 5 PTI, “India to Have 60% Renewable Energy by 2030: Power Minister RK Singh,” Financial Express, July 21, 2020, https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/india-to-have-60-renewable-energy-by-2030-power-minister-rk-singh/2031205; and International Renewable Energy Agency, Renewable Capacity Statistics 2021, 2–4. The following sources were used for figure 1: International Renewable Energy Agency, Renewable Capacity Statistics 2021, 5, 13, 20; “Global Coal Plant Tracker,” Global Energy Monitor, January 2021, https://globalenergymonitor.org/projects/global-coal-plant-tracker/dashboard; and Energy Statistics India 2021 (New Delhi: Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, 2021), 22–23. Projections for 2030 draw from International Energy Agency estimates, which assume that India falls slightly short of current government targets; see Zeniewski et al., India Energy Outlook 2021, 114. 6 Pradip Swarnakar, “Climate Change, Civil Society, and Social Movement in India,” in India in a Warming World, 253–272; and Nives Dolsak and Aseem Prakash, “Are India’s Political Parties Ignoring Climate Change?” Forbes, April 13, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/prakashdolsak/2019/04/13/are-indias-political-parties-ignoring-climate-change/?sh=23f7978662e9. In addition, a recent Pew Research Center survey found that, while 58 percent of Indians believed that “climate change is a very serious problem,” only 37 percent believed that their “national government is doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change.” A survey by the New Delhi–based Association for Democratic Reforms, meanwhile, found that only 12 percent of Indian voters rated water and air pollution among their five most important governance priorities; climate change as a phenomenon, including but not limited to such pollution, did not make the list of voters’ thirty-one most important issues at all. See, respectively, Cary Funk et al., “Concern Over Climate and the Environment Predominates Among These Publics,” Pew Research Center, September 29, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/09/29/concern-over-climate-and-the-environment-predominates-among-these-publics; and Association for Democratic Reforms, All India Survey on Governance Issues and Voting Behavior 2018 (New Delhi: Association for Democratic Reforms, 2019), 14. 7 While the marginal cost to the generator of an additional unit of VRE is essentially zero, grid operators usually still have to pay for each additional unit at a contracted price. This means that in some cases grid operators may have an incentive to use nonrenewable energy that, though more expensive to generate because of the cost of its fuel, is nevertheless available to them at a lower contracted price. One solution is to have VRE generators with surplus generation capacity pay traditional generators for the right to sell their energy, an approach that can allow maximal use of VRE while providing savings for all parties. For an example of both a market-based and a non-market-based approach, see Lakshmi Alagappan et al., Regulatory Dimensions to Renewable Energy Forecasting, Scheduling, and Balancing in India: Regulatory Practices Analysis and Primer (New Delhi: USAID, 2017), 37. 8 Rahul Tongia, Santosh Harish, and Rahul Walawalkar, “Integrating Renewable Energy Into India’s Grid—Harder Than It Looks,” Brookings India, 2018, 14–15, . 9 Zeniewski et al., India Energy Outlook 2021, 114; and Jesse D. Jenkins, Max Luke, and Samuel Thernstrom, “Getting to Zero Carbon Emissions in the Electric Power Sector,” Joule 2, no. 12 (2018): 2506–2508. 10 Under India’s constitution, the electricity sector is a shared responsibility of the states and the central government. However, while the central government plays important roles in the generation and transmission of electricity, distribution—the final step of providing electricity to consumers—has in practice come under the purview of state governments. 11 Thomas Spencer et al., Renewable Power Pathways: Modelling the Integration of Wind and Solar in India by 2030 (New Delhi: Energy and Resources Institute, 2020), 30–34. 12 USAID, Greening the Grid: Pathways to Integrate 175 Gigawatts of Renewable Energy Into India’s Electric Grid, Vol. 1—National Study (New Delhi: USAID, 2017), 84–88; Spencer et al., Renewable Power Pathways, 21–23, 30–34; and Alagappan et al., Regulatory Dimensions to Renewable Energy Forecasting, Scheduling, and Balancing in India, 61. 13 Greening the Grid, 72; and Spencer et al., Renewable Power Pathways, xii–xiii. 14 Vibhuti Garg, “Deepening India’s Short-Term Power Market: New Financial Products Will Boost Trading of Renewable Energy,” Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, September 2020, https://ieefa.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Deepening-India-Short-Term-Power-Market_September-2020.pdf.

• Down To Earth

Air pollution can't be ignored in poll manifestos: Clean Air Punjab

Chandigarh, Aug 4 (IANS) Even as the season for poll manifestos seem to have begun in Punjab with the Akali Dal-Bahujan Samaj Party releasing its initial 13-point election agenda, members of 'Clean Air Punjab', which is a network of citizens and civil society organisations, on Wednesday urged parties to feature time-bound plans to tackle air pollution and public health issues. In a bid to highlight the rising air pollution as well as the serious health hazards faced by the people, a group of organisations, think tanks and civil society groups have joined hands to form 'Clean Air Punjab'. The aim of this collective is to work alongside the state authorities to help achieve clean air by ensuring all non-attainment cities across the state implement the Clean Air Action Plan. The collective has also expressed its displeasure with the Akali Dal-BSP manifesto, which was released on Tuesday, as it failed to address the issue of deteriorating air quality in the state. Air quality data reported across six of the nine non-attainment cities in Punjab suggests that particulate matter (PM10) concentrations were beyond safe limits on more than 50 per cent of the days in the first half of 2021. Punjab also recorded 41,090 deaths due to air pollution in 2019, accounting for nearly 19 per cent of all deaths, said a Down to Earth and Centre for Science and Environment annual study titled 'State of India's Environment 2021'. Samita Kaur, citizen activist from Innovative Farmers group, said despite facing its worst health crisis due to air pollution, the authorities were still not ready to accept the problem. "The air quality in Punjab has been worsening to an extent where air pollution has now become a major killer. Even during the second wave of Covid-19 lockdown when most industries were shut, Punjab's air quality was still a serious matter of concern," she said, adding the state's green regions such as Fazilka and Ropar had an air quality index (AQI) of 113 and 129 respectively, which are well beyond safe standards. "We need to accept that our state is in a health emergency and there is an immediate need for an intervention and prompting action to reduce the prevalent severe air pollution. Hence, as members of 'Clean Air Punjab' we want to strongly urge all parties to make air pollution management a priority in their election manifestos and to specify time-bound measures to protect public health from the harmful impact of air pollution," she added.

• Sustainable Mobility

July vehicle regn, revenue in Kol top last yr’s on public travel fears

Kolkata: The number of vehicle registrations in Bengal this July — and revenue from it — has exceeded that of July last year despite a record spike in fuel prices that saw the price of petrol cross the 100-rupee mark per litre, with experts attributing this to a fear of using public transport after a devastating second wave of the pandemic, and ahead of an imminent third wave.Two-wheelers have seen the highest spurt in sales, followed by four-wheelers. In Kolkata, too, revenue from vehicle registrations has been higher this July compared with July 2020 and 2019, with the number of registrations more than that of July 2020. “It is surprising, considering people underwent pay-cuts and job-losses,” said Sharif Qamar, fellow and area convener, Centre for Sustainable Mobility, TERI. “But personal vehicles are being preferred to avoid the risk of infection in public transport. This trend, however, needs to be studied further,” he added. A senior officer of the transport department, too, said the increase in registrations was, on the face of it, surprising. “Last year, when sales started picking momentum, we thought it was pent-up demand pushing up sales. But this year, we cannot say that. We did not have a total lockdown and the restriction on movement was limited to a month-and-half only,” he said. A category-wise analysis reveals that the growth in registration was higher in two-wheelers than four-wheelers, while there has been a significant drop in the registration of heavy vehicles like buses and goods vehicles. “One of the sorry outcomes of the pandemic is a shift from public transport to personal vehicles,” said transportation expert Anumita Roychowdhury of Centre for Science and Environment, adding, “It is particularly relevant for Kolkata, which has the unique advantage of having a robust public transport system. But people are scared of Covid transmission, which has perhaps driven many to buy their own vehicles for reasons of safety rather than anything else. The shift means more personalized vehicles on the road, more congestion and more pollution.” At Kolkata’s Public Vehicles Department (PVD), one of the oldest RTOs in the country, the number of new registered vehicles in July was 3,249, compared with 3,078 in July 2020 and 3,531 in July 2019. The revenue this July was Rs 25 crore, compared with Rs 15.6 crore in July 2020 and Rs 18 crore in July 2019. In Bengal, the number of vehicle registrations was 90,957 this July, while it had been 77,343 in July 2020 and 1,18,036 in July 2019. Revenue this July was Rs 234 crore, while it was Rs 178.8 crore and 208 crore in July 2020 and July 2019 respectively. The period of growth is too short to draw a definite conclusion, said economist Anirudhha Chowdhury. “If the sale of vehicles sustains for a longer period with the same robustness, then it calls for an in-depth study. But it is, indeed, very interesting how fear of infection can transcend economic rationale in boosting such sales,” he told TOI.

• Solid Waste Management and Circular Economy

Why India’s e-waste system needs change

India’s transition from a linear to a circular economic model prerequisites an urgent need to remove existing bottlenecks and evolve the domestic waste management system. According to the Global e-waste monitor 2020, 53.6 million tonnes (Mt) of electronic waste was generated globally in 2019, of which Asia was the largest contributor. The report found China to be the world’s top e-waste producer having generated 10.1 Mt of e-waste in 2019. The rising e-waste hills are no alien to the Indian sub-continent either. Not surprisingly, India is the third biggest contributor with 3.2 million tonnes. The monitor also highlights that albeit the high generation numbers, China seems to be faring much better than Indian terms of collection and recycling of e-waste. With the accelerating global expansion of the electric vehicles sector, the question of recycling e-waste batteries will soon assume gargantuan proportions in the waste management systems of different countries, including India and China. While both these countries boast of huge populations with increasing electronics consumption as well as a widespread informal e-waste processing sector, the management of rising e-waste differs. India’s transition from a linear to a circular economic model prerequisites an urgent need to remove existing bottlenecks and evolve the domestic waste management system. While the replication of the Chinese format is not the objective, the idea is to adopt a different perspective of policy making and enforcement of legislations to promote cross country learning for a healthy exchange of strategies and models in order to understand the applicabilityas well as the anomalies in the different national, socio-cultural and policy contexts. The informal sector China has a robust policy structure in place, whereby their informal sector coexists alongside the advanced formal recycling system. Following an incentive based mechanism, in 2012 China had started the implementation of the e-waste fund subsidy policy wherein a ‘advance disposal fee’ is placed on electrical product manufacturers to subsidize e-waste recycling and treatment enterprises. The collected fees is placed in the fund and then allocated to licensed recyclers to cover costs related to the collection and treatment of e-waste. This aided the dismantling of issues concerning environment protection and resource utilisation, under the extended producer responsibility (EPR) principle, and played a key role in the development of the e-waste treatment industry, effectively improving the recycling and resource utilization of e-waste. Such policy measures and stricter controls laid out with incentives for participants in the e-waste chain has helped to not only improve efficiency but has also contributed towards the decline of the informal sector in the country. On the other hand, while India can boast of being the only country in Southern Asia to have a specific e-waste legislation in place since 2011, the e-waste recycling system has suffered long due to gaps in policy structure. The Indian e-waste landscape is still plagued with ambitious collection targets but ineffective implementation results. With the presence of 312 authorised formal recycling facilities that have a treatment capacity of approximately 800 kilo tonnes (kt) of waste annually, and 31 authorised producer responsibility organizations (PROs) providing compliance services, the circuit is still run predominantly by the informal sector. While EPR did prove to be an efficient strategy to garner greater seriousness among various stakeholders to comply with regulations, the lack of incentives has proven to be a deterrent. The formal sector struggles with high costs and high collection targets.Further, private players, like those operating through PROs observe a limited role due to the low reliability factor of securing economies of scale in sourcing e-waste quantities in the formal sector. Imported waste China has moved much ahead from being infamous as the e-waste hub of the world due to inadequate management of the huge amount of domestic generation as well as imports of e-waste. In 2018, China banned the import of 24 grades of solid waste including e-waste, which was later extended to a ban on the import of all types of solid waste by the country in 2020. Rising e-waste quantities and lack of adequate processing abilities in the country led China to face environmental problems. The ban did have a positive impact, promoting an efficient e-waste management system. E-waste recovery and treatment companies upgraded their technology and the renewable resources industry were forced to upgrade to deal with the situation. As per the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment in 2019, due to e-waste regulations and expansion of facilities, significant growth in treatment capacity and quality was observed with more than 70 million e-waste units being dismantled annually.In case of India, while the import of e-waste is banned, the refurbishment and re-exportation of second-hand goods is allowed. However, the differentiation between e-waste and second-hand goods is not very clear, making it difficult to ensure the restriction on e-waste entry. As per a 2020 study by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), the average share of electrical equipment in total imports is 9.62%. The import of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) has been increasing at the rate of 12.3% annually in the last six years, with 2019–20 witnessing a negative growth. The existence of a favourable policy in terms of an import ban while highlights that the foundations of a proper system have been laid, the ineffectual implementation describes the very reason of the need for a change. In sum, it is clear that a simple command and control policy has not proven to be a solution. Learning from the Chinese experience, India should imply a complete ban on waste imports to prioritise domestic management before any ecological catastrophe hits us. Further,with the dominant presence of the informal sector, a focus on mandatory collection targets may not prove to be an efficient strategy to enhance producer responsibility. Picking up on the positive components of the ‘Chinese model’, perhaps exposing the e-waste sector in India to an incentive based mechanism can accelerate improvements. The current landscape lacks the presence of economic instruments that promote as well as support the collection and processing system. Involvement of financial incentives like a subsidy for producers to support collection and recycling processes, or for consumers to deposit e-waste at designated centres, or even direct funding of recyclers will help to reduce and perhaps remove the laidback attitude among different stakeholders groups of the waste management chain. Initiating a cross country learning program can help India to not just gain the knowledge to make concrete and impactful changes in its domestic management and focus on developing technologies, but perhaps someday it may also help the country to lead the recycling agenda internationally. In case of India, while the import of e-waste is banned, the refurbishment and re-exportation of second-hand goods is allowed. However, the differentiation between e-waste and second-hand goods is not very clear, making it difficult to ensure the restriction on e-waste entry. As per a 2020 study by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), the average share of electrical equipment in total imports is 9.62%. The import of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) has been increasing at the rate of 12.3% annually in the last six years, with 2019–20 witnessing a negative growth. The existence of a favourable policy in terms of an import ban while highlights that the foundations of a proper system have been laid, the ineffectual implementation describes the very reason of the need for a change. In sum, it is clear that a simple command and control policy has not proven to be a solution. Learning from the Chinese experience, India should imply a complete ban on waste imports to prioritise domestic management before any ecological catastrophe hits us. Further,with the dominant presence of the informal sector, a focus on mandatory collection targets may not prove to be an efficient strategy to enhance producer responsibility. Picking up on the positive components of the ‘Chinese model’, perhaps exposing the e-waste sector in India to an incentive based mechanism can accelerate improvements. The current landscape lacks the presence of economic instruments that promote as well as support the collection and processing system. Involvement of financial incentives like a subsidy for producers to support collection and recycling processes, or for consumers to deposit e-waste at designated centres, or even direct funding of recyclers will help to reduce and perhaps remove the laidback attitude among different stakeholders groups of the waste management chain. Initiating a cross country learning program can help India to not just gain the knowledge to make concrete and impactful changes in its domestic management and focus on developing technologies, but perhaps someday it may also help the country to lead the recycling agenda internationally.

• Sustainable Mobility

Unplanned areas have limited access to public transport: CSE study

A study by the Centre for Science and Environment said that unplanned and low-income areas of Delhi have limited access to affordable and efficient public transport services, compared to planned and affluent neighbourhoods. The study based on a ground-level survey in 16 planned and unplanned colonies stated that if the issue is not addressed urgently, it can further increase air pollution in the city. It also said that even the planned and affluent neighbourhoods are not up to the mark. "Comparison of locational advantages and disadvantages of settlements shows that planned settlements are 2.8 times better placed than unplanned settlements. Planned areas have, on an average, 1.6 times more road space and 1.4 times more open qualitative spaces. On the criteria of ‘interface between settlement and the city’, planned settlements are about 1.3 times better connected than low-income unplanned settlements," the study read. As per the estimates of the draft Delhi Master Plan 2041 (MPD 2041), the city’s population will be 27-30 million by 2041, and 50 per cent of this increase will happen due to migration and by then, Delhi would generate 46.2 million motorised trips daily, the study said. “If such a massive load of daily motorised travel trips are not shifted to public transport to achieve the MPD 2041 target of modal split of 80:20 in favour of public and shared transport, Delhi will remain locked in pollution and carbon trap,” said CSE executive director Anumita Roychowdhury. “This requires immediate improvement in neighbourhood scale accessibility to bus and metro services and minimisation of interchanges. The expectation of MPD 2041 that 50 per cent of Delhi’s population will be within the influence zone of mass transit by 2041 and mixed-use development will encourage shift towards public transport, can be fulfilled only if neighbourhood-level design and infrastructure improve for safe and efficient access,” she said. The study recommended that the government should work towards a city-wide deployment of integrated and affordable public transport services that deeply penetrate and connect neighbourhoods efficiently "Ensure buses and Metro services are easily accessible through walking and cycling and through feeders and intermediate public transport system that penetrate deep inside neighbourhoods. Integrate housing programmes with transport connectivity and accessibility requirements," it recommended.

• Sustainable Mobility

July vehicle registrations, revenue in Kolkata top last year’s on public travel fears

The number of vehicle registrations in Bengal this July — and revenue from it — has exceeded that of July last year despite a record spike in fuel prices that saw the price of petrol cross the 100-rupee mark per litre, with experts attributing this to a fear of using public transport after a devastating second wave of the pandemic, and ahead of an imminent third wave. The number of vehicle registrations in Bengal this July — and revenue from it — has exceeded that of July last year despite a record spike in fuel prices that saw the price of petrol cross the 100-rupee mark per litre, with experts attributing this to a fear of using public transport after a devastating second wave of the pandemic, and ahead of an imminent third wave. Two-wheelers have seen the highest spurt in sales, followed by four-wheelers. July vehicle registrations, revenue in Kolkata top last year’s on public travel fears In Kolkata, too, revenue from vehicle registrations has been higher this July compared with July 2020 and 2019, with the number of registrations more than that of July 2020. “It is surprising, considering people underwent pay-cuts and job-losses,” said Sharif Qamar, fellow and area convener, Centre for Sustainable Mobility, TERI. “But personal vehicles are being preferred to avoid the risk of infection in public transport. This trend, however, needs to be studied further,” he added. A senior officer of the transport department, too, said the increase in registrations was, on the face of it, surprising. “Last year, when sales started picking momentum, we thought it was pent-up demand pushing up sales. But this year, we cannot say that. We did not have a total lockdown and the restriction on movement was limited to a month and a half only,” he said. The growth in registration was higher in two-wheelers than four-wheelers, while there has been a significant drop in the registration of heavy vehicles. “One of the sorry outcomes of the pandemic is a shift from public transport to personal vehicles,” said transportation expert Anumita Roychowdhury of Centre for Science and Environment. “It is particularly relevant for Kolkata, which has the unique advantage of having a robust public transport system. But people are scared of Covid transmission, which has perhaps driven many to buy their own vehicles. The shift means more personalized vehicles on the road, more congestion and more pollution,” she said. At Kolkata PVD, the number of new registered vehicles in July was 3,249, compared with 3,078 in July 2020 and 3,531 in July 2019. The revenue this July was Rs 25 crore, compared with Rs 15.6 crore in July 2020 and Rs 18 crore in July 2019. In Bengal, the number of vehicle registrations was 90,957 this July, 77,343 in July 2020 and 1,18,036 in July 2019. Revenue this July was Rs 234 crore, while it was Rs 178.8 crore and 208 crore in July 2020 and July 2019.

• DTE - Web

No Testing Kits, Covid Centres Shut, Oxygen Miles Away: Rural Healthcare In Covid Times

In rural Nandurbar, some primary health centres do not even have rapid testing kits; Covid Care Centres have been shut after the second wave abated, and oxygen access is miles away. Nandurbar: When Kalubai Valvi was bitten by a snake last monsoon in Sumbipada in Nandurbar district of Maharashtra, her husband Nimji did not take her to the primary health centre (PHC) in neighbouring Jangthi village. Instead, he paid more than Rs 2,000 to hire a vehicle to take her to the government-run Molgi rural hospital, two hours away. Valvi did the same when his daughter was bitten by a snake a few months later. Both survived. Kalubai fears for the safety of her six children during monsoon months when snakebites are common in rural Nandurbar. "Let's see what happens this year," said Kalubai nervously as the family sat watching a solar-powered television set. There is a reason why Nimji did not rush his wife or daughter to the Jangthi PHC. "There are no facilities there and there is no staff at night," said Nimji, a farmer with seven family members to care for and few resources to afford medical bills. The older Jangthi PHC was housed in a decrepit building and it was moved to a newer building in June 2021. But with no water or electricity, the centre is barely functional. As the pandemic's second wave peaked in May 2021, 53% of the deaths caused by Covid-19 were in rural India, said a report by the Centre for Science and Environment which pointed to the acute shortage of resources crippling community health centres. With a potential third wave now looming, we visited the remote tribal district of Nandurbar in northern Maharashtra to understand the challenges of rural healthcare. We are reporting our findings in a two-part series, the first of which detailed how unprepared Nandurbar's rural healthcare system is to deal with Covid-19 with expired medicines in PHC pharmacies, including injections for adverse reactions to vaccines. In this concluding part of the series, we report how these facilities are not even equipped to deal with routine emergencies. No testing facilities A snakebite can be even more fatal for a resident of Mandvi village in the Nandurbar district's Akrani taluka. Snakebite patients are referred by the PHC there to the Dhadgaon rural hospital, 10 km away, or to the Nandurbar civil hospital, 60 km away. Nandurbar in northern Maharashtra is a backward, predominantly tribal, district described as aspirational, by government think-tank NITI Aayog. It had also reported one of the highest case fatality rates in the state in the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. The state itself had been among the worst-hit in India. With basic needs unmet, rural Nandurbar relies mostly on quacks and private practitioners, we found. Snakebites are only one of its problems. We also found that most women in the district's villages had not had institutional deliveries before or during the pandemic. They mostly deliver at home without professional care because of the problems of accessing local healthcare. As for Covid-19 emergencies, many PHCs did not even have rapid testing facilities, let alone RT-PCR, ahead of a possible third wave. While the district administration had erected Covid Care Centres during the earlier phases of the pandemic, many are now shut which means a Covid-19 patient will have to be taken to the taluka's rural hospital for oxygen availability. But patient transportation, as we see later, is an ordeal because PHC ambulances are unreliable and rural roads are a mess. "The average walking distance to a PHC [in India] for most people is 8 km and many times this 8 km is in hilly areas. We have just 24,000 PHCs across the country, when we need around 125,000 more and the state of these PHCs is a joke--they are ill-equipped, ill-staffed," said Abhijit Vaidya, national president of Pune-based Arogya Sena that works in the field of public health. He pointed out that with a health allocation of just 1.1% of the national gross domestic product (GDP), it is not surprising that India fares worse than Bangladesh on rural healthcare. The World Health Organization suggests a health budget allocation of 5% of the national GDP, he added. Operating guidelines unheeded According to Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS), PHCs are supposed to provide outpatient services, 24-hour emergency services, referral services and in-patient services. The IPHS guidelines for PHCs list 24-hour delivery services, both normal and assisted, as essential services. This includes promotion of institutional deliveries and management of normal deliveries. Institutional deliveries are important to reduce infant and maternal mortality. Also, after the outbreak of the pandemic, a Standard Operating Procedure was issued by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare for the continuation of essential services. It stated that PHC teams are supposed to follow up with pregnant women, high-risk pregnant women, newborns, children due for immunisation and malnourished children on their needs. The SOP also stated that each pregnant woman is to be linked to an appropriate facility for delivery and in case of home deliveries, immediate visits are to be made by Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANM) or Community Health Officers (CHO) to assess the health of the woman and newborn. We found that these guidelines were not followed. Rural health centres are also having a tough time with the Covid-19 vaccination drive. Poor power supply (for vaccine cold storage) and internet connectivity (for Cowin registration) are major stumbling blocks, as we explain later. Coupled with vaccine hesitancy, the pace of vaccination in rural Nandurbar has slowed down. The district has vaccinated 40.7% of those above 45 with at least one dose of the vaccine as on July 28 while 15 other districts in the state have done better on this front. Kolhapur leads the state with 74.28% vaccination. Home deliveries preferred Jangthi in Akkalkuwa taluka is one of the most remote villages in the district and while electric poles have been erected in the area, there is no power supply. The barely furnished new PHC building does not have water supply either which means that it is not equipped to conduct deliveries. Most women who live around this PHC choose to deliver at home, as we said. A visit to Sumbipada which is covered by this PHC showed that healthcare workers have been missing from work for a while now. Gulbi Gamer Singh of Sumbipada has two daughters, one four-year-old and another, six months old, and she has not had any visits from ASHAs (accredited social health activists) asking about immunisation or nutrition for her children. "They still haven't seen my children. Both deliveries happened at home. I wasn't given any supplements, did not receive any money (paid as part of Janani Suraksha Yojana for home births). I went and got my children vaccinated at health camps. My children have not received any nutritious food from the anganwadi in two months," said Gulbi, cradling her baby. Even Kalubai's six children were delivered at home. They did not receive any routine immunisation except for polio. he situation was the same in three of the five PHCs we visited. Pisibai Kalusingh Vasave was waiting outside Mandvi PHC in Nandurbar's Akrani taluka for her Covid-19 jab. A resident of the same village, Pisibai has five children, all of whom were delivered at home. "But the nurse helped us," said Vasave, alarmed when asked why she did not choose to deliver at a health facility. At the neighbouring Telkhedi PHC, the staff told us the outpatient department nurse can handle deliveries during the day but she is not available at night. Waiting an entire morning for a doctor At the newly inaugurated Bilgaon PHC, the staff complained of no power supply or internet connectivity that hampers their services, particularly vaccination and deliveries. The designated ambulance for this PHC had broken down for around six months in 2020. It is now available but those living in deep interiors still need to get patients to a decent road on a bamboo carrier. Bilgaon PHC caters to 11 villages with a population of 14,221. In Jangthi too, everyone, from the residents to the staff at its PHC, complained about the condition of the road linking it to Molgi where a dependable rural hospital is situated. The road was sanctioned under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, a flagship central mission to build rural roads, but now is no more than a heap of rubble and dust. So, villagers carry patients on a bamboo stretcher upto the spot from where a public or private ambulance can then take them to a hospital. This ordeal worsens during the rains when villagers have to use small dinghies to cross swollen rivers. "The old ambulance in Jangthi PHC was defunct for almost a year. Even when it was available, they would charge us Rs 1,500. Private vehicles charge Rs 2,000. We don't have a choice because we have to rush to Molgi rural hospital in case of any emergency at night," said a resident. At the end of a long journey, there is no guarantee that a doctor will be available at the PHC. "Even for routine outpatient consultations, people come and wait at the PHC from 8 a.m. onwards while the doctor never comes before 11 a.m.," said Batesingh Pavra, a resident of village Mal in Dhadgaon that falls under Bilgaon PHC. Mogra Khetya Valvi and her father were waiting for a doctor to arrive at the Jangthi PHC when we arrived there. She had been complaining of swelling in her body and exhaustion for almost a month. The staff suspects she is anaemic. Nandurbar reports numerous cases of sickle cell anemia, a genetic disorder. It was 11 a.m. and Mogra and her father had already been waiting for a couple of hours. The doctor finally arrived at 2 p.m. and referred Valvi to the Molgi rural hospital for a simple blood test since the lab technician at Jangthi was not available. Mogra and her father had to stay over in a neighbouring village, submit samples the next morning and later collect reports so they could show it to the doctor the next day. Acute staff shortage A look at the muster in Jangthi PHC showed one clerk and two peons had not reported to work since May 2021 while one of the two doctors had not shown up to work between June 10 and June 21. The PHC caters to nine villages or a population of 11,000. In Shahada taluka, Ratna Bhil, 21, had come to Padalda PHC with her newborn child, husband and mother-in-law. She had delivered her baby only 12 days ago at the civil hospital and had come to the PHC on this June day to get her stitches removed. She had to wait for an hour or so since the doctors were busy. The vacancies at the PHC and the two sub-centres in its campus include nurses (5), general nurse midwife (1), multipurpose health workers (4), lady health visitor or a visiting nurse (1), peons (3) and arogya sahayak or health worker (1). When IndiaSpend checked in the third week of June, the sub-centre in Malpada village in Akkalkuwa, another in Mandvi and the ones in Padalda were all shut during the day. A sub-centre is the most basic unit of the public health system. It is manned by an ANM and a male health worker. It caters to 5,000 people in the plains and 3,000 in hilly/difficult/tribal areas. (A PHC caters to 30,000 people in the plains and 20,000 in hilly/difficult/tribal areas. Each PHC acts as a referral unit for six sub-centres.) Latika Rajput, a Nandurbar-based activist and member of the state's core committee on malnourishment, described these conditions as "inhuman and a violation of the right to life". "The unavailability of basic health facilities, no guarantee of a doctor and many such issues at PHCs increase the chances of a referral to the rural hospital. When very critical patients reach the rural hospital, they are further referred to the civil hospital," she pointed out. Doctors said they are struggling to deal with shortage of staff and resources. "At night, only the peon and driver are there. I am there only sometimes. Nurses cannot stay overnight as they have no accommodation facilities. An ambulance is available because the driver is a local," said Santosh Pavra, medical officer of Telkhedi PHC. When asked about missing doctor signatures on some outpatient department (OPD) case papers at the PHC, he admitted: "The lab technician had to run the OPD for one day. I had asked him to. We (doctors) are having vaccination sessions every day. What can we do?" Basic Covid services missing According to the SOP released by Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare's (MoHFW) on 'Covid-19 Containment and Management in Peri-Urban, Rural and Tribal areas', PHCs have been given a long list of responsibilities including the supervision of Covid Care Centres for asymptomatic or mild symptomatic cases, as we said in the first story in the series. They are also supposed to be turned into Dedicated Covid Health Centres (DCHC) for moderate cases and are expected to have oxygen support. But PHCs were barely managing to carry out vaccination. "Without revitalising the public health system, if the government is thinking about giving it Covid responsibilities, it is a mockery of the people," said health activist Abhijit Vaidya. At the Mandvi PHC, we found that rapid testing kits for Covid-19 were not available and villagers would need to go to Dhadgaon to get themselves tested. Covid-19 patients who need oxygen too would need to go to Dhadgaon, contrary to the SOP guidelines. The PHC offers Covid-19 vaccination but there is no internet service to enter beneficiary details in the COWIN portal which tracks the national immunisation drive so the staff have to travel to Dhadgaon to make the entries. After a slow start, the immunisation drive is picking up at the PHC--we saw 30-50 people queuing up for jabs. The Telkhedi PHC did not have a rapid testing kit either and sealed vaccine vials were found in a plastic food container in a fridge at the PHC. Doctors said they were helpless in dealing with the chronic staff and resource shortages at their centres. "Rapid testing kits have not been allotted to us," said Pavra, medical officer at the Telkhedi PHC. At Bilgaon, the PHC has managed to vaccinate only 10-12 people a day so far which, the staff claimed, was an improvement over the initial months. Villagers here have to go to Dhadgaon for an RT-PCR test, results of which take at least three to four days. The same is the case if a Covid-19 patient needs oxygen. Rapid testing kits were however available here. In Jangthi, the PHC staff has been struggling to get people vaccinated. It had only managed 174 vaccinations by the third week of June. A rapid test is now available here. The ice pack for the vaccine has to be brought from Molgi rural hospital since there is no cold storage facility here.

• Director General Office

RTI Reveals Role of Netas, Who Rush with Flood Relief, in the Making of the Disaster in Maharashtra

In the second consecutive year, monsoon landslides and flash floods across Raigad, Kolhapur and Sangli districts, amongst others, has created havoc in terms of human deaths and destruction of property and land. While the cloudburst and climate are definitely part of the problem, activists have been crying hoarse over issues such as mindless sand mining permissions, excavation of soil by cutting hills, massive tree felling to the tune of over a lakh of them for the purpose of four-laning of the 438-kms long Panvel-Zarap section of the Mumbai-Goa highway and, giving building permissions within the flood lines of the rivers. These are the larger part of the horrendous problem that is killing people, deluging and flattening villages -- factors that are responsible for climate change, they assert. While political leaders including Maharashtra’s chief minister, opposition leader and a host of others are making a dash to the tragedy-struck areas, it is just an eye-wash to keep the voters happy and show them carrots through measly financial compensations and promise of building retaining walls along water bodies! A Right to Information (RTI) query revealed that Kolhapur floods were caused due to 1,250 acres of red and blue flood-line area, a no-development zone, being used for construction activity along the banks of the Panchganga River. This was followed by a letter by Kolhapur activist Balkrishna Shelar to the National Green Tribunal (NGT), Delhi, which suo motu converted it into a petition and ordered the irrigation department of the state government to carry out a fresh survey to demarcate new red and blue flood-lines due to the changing behaviour of rains as the 2005 flood-line demarcation was no more relevant. The NGT gave a third reminder in 2020 as the task was not done. Finally, it has now completed 70% of the work. Says Mr Shelar, “The irrigation department has finished redrawing only 70% of the flood lines so far. What is shocking is that, in the 70% revised flood line that they have marked, the flood water in last week’s torrential rains, has gone much beyond that line, thus showing that their markings are incorrect. They have yet to draw the line for the remaining 30% of the river bank, which has seen even worse flooding in those areas, than the 70%.” That the increased threat of flooding during monsoon for Kolhapur citizens is mainly due to permission given on the low-lying areas of the Panchganga River is because, says Mr Shelar, “During the 2019 floods, the release of water from the Almati Dam was blamed. Strangely this year, the water from that dam saw a steady, regular release so there was no sudden opening of the floodgates. The Radhanagari dam is still not filled to its capacity so there was no question of releasing water from it. Then why did the floods become so catastrophic? It’s obvious that giving permissions to build in low lying areas of the river is responsible for it.” Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, who visited Kolhapur has directed the officials not to allow anymore construction in the river catchment area but Mr Shelar doubts, ``how far it is going to be implemented.” As for the present modern constructions that not only stand out like sore thumbs but have become a threat of life and limbs of the citizens, the CM’s solution is to build a retaining wall! As for the Raigad district, Naseer Jalal, who has championed the cause of the environment in this region has been fighting relentlessly for 25 years to halt indiscriminate mechanised sand mining, which also lead to small and big mangroves on river banks being eroded, amongst other ecological fallouts. He has used RTI over the years to procure information on tenders and proposals for sanctioning sand mining in ecologically sensitive river bodies but has finally knocked at the doors of the judiciary as a fresh tender just last month has been floated for the mechanised sand mining work predominantly in the Savitri river and Waghotan river on the border of Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg districts for facilitating boating in these regions. This, he says, is violative of the provisions of the Coastal Regulation Zones Notification of 2011. The horrendous floods in Raigad district are the more severe because of man-made destruction than nature’s fury. “Sand mining, indiscriminate soil excavation from the tops of the hills to widen the Mumbai-Goa highway, felling of trees – over one lakh of them -- to build this highway and construction atop the hills are the reasons why rain water gushes in a fury as all natural stoppages for erosion of soil and containing water along the slopes have been tampered with.” Sumaira Abdulali, Mumbai-based environmental activist and founder of Awaaz Foundation has been consistently sending letters to the divisional commissioner and collector of Raigad district. One of her recent letters’ states, “In spite of sand being carted away in large volumes and consequent drop of the level of the beach by almost 10 feet, land erosion and felling of trees, there appears to be no will to implement long term action against illegal beach sand mining in Raigad District.” While Jaleel and a team of activists propelled the state government in 2010 to bring in stringent laws for sand mining, a resolution of the Maharashtra government in 2013 made it easier to get mining clearances. Ms Abdulali had stated then in an interview to Down to Earth magazine that, “this new criterion is a blow to sustainable sand mining. The amount of sand generated by waterway-clearing will never be sufficient for the construction industry, and additional mining permits will have to be given, which will simply continue to damage the environment.” Sunita Narain, internationally acclaimed environmentalist has been consistently warning about wrong developmental policies in urban areas as well. She has stated that, “on the one hand, we are getting our water management wrong—we are building in floodplains, destroying our water-bodies and filling up our water channels. Mumbai or Chandigarh or Bengaluru did not drown only because of extreme rain. They drowned also because all drainage systems have been wilfully destroyed. Our city developers only see land for building; not land for water. Now, the changing climate will make this mismanagement even more deadly.”

• Director General Office

This heatwave is not a weather blip

Searing heat, touching 50 degrees Celsius in the otherwise cold regions of Canada and in the western regions of the United States, has brought home the message — once again and loudly — that climate change is here and is about to get worse. Searing heat, touching 50 degrees Celsius in the otherwise cold regions of Canada and in the western regions of the United States, has brought home the message — once again and loudly — that climate change is here and is about to get worse. The heat was so unbearable and off the charts that it killed an estimated 500 people in Canada's British Columbia province. Then there are reports of the savage damage it has done to animals and other creatures. The inferno is now adding to the challenge of wildfires, threatening lives and properties. Europe is seeing a similar heatwave; it is predicted that this year's temperatures will be the highest since records have been kept. Yet another year when we have broken the previous year's heat record! The fact is this heatwave is not incidental or accidental — a mere weather blip. Scientists working with the World Weather Attribution initiative conclude that this heatwave "was virtually impossible" without human-caused climate change. They find that the temperatures were so extreme that they lie outside the range of historically observed heat records. They conclude that the frequency of this once-in-a-thousand-year event would increase with temperature rise, and when the world touches 2°C increase over pre-industrial ages, it would become a five- to 10-year event. What then is clear is this: One, climate change is happening faster than expected and we are certainly unprepared. Two, climate change is a great leveller — extreme and variable rain, increased frequency of tropical cyclones and heat and cold are hitting the world's poorest. Each event cripples them and makes them even more vulnerable and marginalised. But the rich are also not excluded from this revenge of nature. The death of people from heatwaves in Canada must keep reminding us of the tragedy that awaits everyone. Even as I write this, perhaps for the umpteenth time (my readers must forgive me), we have still not seen the writing on the wall. Our actions still do not match our words. The technologies to combat climate change are available — but they require application at a disruptive and transformative scale. This is what we are missing. I say this because every extra day of procrastination will make the task even more difficult. Take the case of rising heat. To adapt and survive, the rich in otherwise temperate regions will now invest more in devices like air conditioners to cool their homes. This will, in turn, add to the energy demand and, given that countries are still fiddling around with fossil fuel-based electricity, it will add to greenhouse gas emissions. We know that heating and cooling devices take up the bulk of the power demand in our cities today. In Delhi, research by my colleagues at the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) shows as soon as the temperature crosses 27-28°C, the cooling demand increases exponentially — electricity demand rises by 190 MW for every degree rise in mercury. With more electricity generation, there will be more emissions, increasing the temperatures even more. The vicious cycle will spiral out of control. This direct relationship between heat and energy has another dimension to it — thermal comfort or discomfort. This is not just about temperatures but also about how well-designed and ventilated our living spaces are. This is why even when temperatures are not so high, but there is humidity or lack of air, we feel uncomfortable and "hot". The fan makes air conditioner more efficient as it evaporates moisture from our bodies. It is about cooling but also about design. Just consider how traditional buildings were designed to keep out the heat; by designing for the sun and wind, and not against nature. They used orientation and shades on window — what we now call passive architecture — to ensure that buildings are protected from the glare; they used courtyards and open windows for ventilation. Trees provided shade, as much as other environmental benefits. Sadly, modern architecture built on glass facades and closed spaces for air cooling has shunned and dismissed this knowledge as unnecessary and backward. Then there is also the fact that more heat will add to water stress — for irrigation, for drinking and for fighting forest fires. As we pump more water from the ground or use electricity for transporting water, we will need more energy — further reinforcing the vicious cycle. This is why we must go back to finding ways of optimising local water resources; harvesting the rain where and when it falls so that we can reduce dependence on pumped- and energy-dense water. In the heating planet, this knowledge of living with extreme heat and cold without increasing the energy footprint of our living spaces and cities will be crucial. So, as much as we need to move away from fossil fuels, we need to make sure we can do much more with much less energy — this is the climate change challenge. The scorched world should teach us this. (Writer is Director General of CSE and editor of Down To Earth, an environmentalist who pushes for changes in policies, practices and mindsets; Courtesy: https://www.downtoearth.org.in/)