Daily News Compilation (HINDU) for 2nd May

Managing the monsoon (M.S. Swaminathan)

South Asian climate outlook and Indian Meteorological department has predicted that this time the monsoons will be below normal and there will be El Nino effect.

Now the author says that in the era of Climate change its becoming very difficult to predict about the extreme weather events:

• In March-April this year, we had unexpected hailstorms and heavy rainfall in parts of central and north-west India. 
• Outside India also, most of California is experiencing extreme drought with storage levels in the major reservoirs as well as lakes well below historic levels. 
• Australia experienced what has been described as the Millennium drought which led to the growth of water markets and to renewed emphasis on water security measures.

In India, unlike in the United States and Australia, agriculture is not just a food producing enterprise but also the backbone of the livelihood security of nearly 60 per cent of the population. Therefore, there is no time to relax in the area of taking anticipatory steps to safeguard food, water, energy and livelihood security in rural India, in the event of an erratic monsoon. We should initiate proactive steps immediately to ensure food and drinking water security for not only people but also for the over one billion farm animal population.

Some ideas by author:

1. Water security and water use efficiency

• mobilisation of group endeavour among farm families with small holdings in areas such as plant protection, water harvesting and post-harvest technologies.
• Water harvesting in homes, farms and factories must become mandatory. Tamil Nadu has already initiated steps in this direction. The rain-cum-solar energy centre functioning in Chennai is a source of credible public information on rainwater harvesting and solar energy use. Such centres need to be replicated in all our cities, towns and block headquarters.
• The latest technologies for using the available water in the most efficient manner possible should be adopted. 

2. Fertilizer use efficiency, there are technologies such as those developed by the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC) in the U.S. which can help improve the efficiency of urea use by about 50 per cent. Methods of managing the triple alliance of pests, pathogens and weeds must be popularised.

3. Harvesting of the sun in homes, offices, fields and factories should also become mandatory; it can help increase energy supply in rural and urban areas. 

4. At the post-harvest stage, a national grain storage policy with these three components must be adopted — 

• we should promote the use of small storage bins, like the Pusa Bin, at the farm level. 
• Second, we should implement the rural godown scheme for safe storage of foodgrains and perishable commodities at the village level. Such a rural godown scheme was introduced as early as 1979, but the programme has yet to take off in a manner that can make a difference to preventing the loss of food items at the village/block levels. 
• Third, we should establish a national grid of ultramodern foodgrain silos in at least 50 locations in the country, each capable of storing about a million tonnes. 

Unfortunately, there is still a mismatch between production and post-harvest technologies, with producers and consumers unable to get the full benefit of higher production.

5. For the food and water security of farm animals, we need to earmark potential areas for establishing cattle camps where the animals can be looked after during a drought emergency. These camps should have access to water. 

6. We should identify and establish groundwater sanctuaries at appropriate places is yet to be implemented. These are concealed aquifers which should be tapped only when absolutely essential. Like a wildlife sanctuary, they should be protected from exploitation. The establishment of such sanctuaries — at least one each in the 130 agroclimatic zones generally identified in our country — will help us to save precious cattle and other farm animals, both from distress sale and starvation deaths.

7. We should develop drought, flood and good weather codes to minimise the adverse impact of unfavourable monsoons and to maximise production in a good monsoon year. 

The drought code consists of a series of dos and don’ts during deficient rainfall. As in the case of drought and flood codes, seed banks consisting of seeds of alternative crops should be maintained. Seed reserves are as important for crop security as grain reserves are important for food security. For example, during the recent and severe drought in California, it was found that some of the earlier crops like millets had survived with a reasonable yield, while wheat or rice could not withstand the severe drought.

8. Fortunately in our National Food Security Act, there is provision to procure and supply under the Public Distribution System, local grains like ragi , bajra , jowar and a whole series of minor millets. Since such crops require milling, they have been referred to as coarse cereals. They should be referred to as climate smart nutri cereals. They are now being provided at Rs.1 per kg — an extremely attractive price from the point of view of resource poor consumers. Such underutilised crops are now known to be rich in macro and micronutrients and could help in the fight against protein hunger caused by the deficiency of protein in diets and hidden hunger caused by the deficiency of micronutrients such as iron, iodine, zinc, Vitamin A and Vitamin B{-1}{-2}. If the Food Security Act is backed by a nutrition literacy movement, the demand for climate smart nutri-cereals will grow. This will help in promoting the cultivation of crops which may do better under drought conditions.

Toward climate smart farming

9. In each of the major agroclimatic zones, at least two members (a woman and a man) of every panchayat or local body should be trained to be climate risk managers. They can help the rest of the community in implementing the provisions of the proposed drought, flood and good weather codes. 

10. The government has recently introduced a national policy on agroforestry. Agroforestry combines the benefits of carbon sequestration and local food security. The inclusion of fertilizer trees in agroforestry systems can help build soil carbon banks.

11. This year is the International Year of Family Farming. Family farming is both a way of life and a means to livelihood. India has probably the largest number of family farmers. Our aim should be to make every family farm a climate smart farm, equipped with the knowledge and technologies essential to manage the expected El Niño triggered adverse rainfall conditions.

A silent killer that’s not an election issue (R.K. Pachauri)

The authir saya that we have the legislative framework for environmental protection  but we need to convert intent into strong and effective action.

WHO REPORT

• 7 million deaths worldwide in 2012 caused by exposure to air pollution  (recent WHO reports)

India's worries

• More than 300 million people in India have no access to electricity, and those that do still do not have a stable supply. As a result, kerosene lamps and candles are used widely in many Indian homes, with high levels of air pollution affecting hundreds of millions.
• Women and children are particularly vulnerable because they spend more time at home.
•  irrational subsidies on kerosene, the transition to cleaner fuels in many Indian homes may, therefore, remain slow
• Perhaps even more serious is the dependence of around 700 million people on the burning of biomass in their homes, using inefficient stoves that emit large quantities of smoke, leading to high doses of air pollution.

Some solution:

Decentralised use of photovoltaic panels: As part of its Lighting a Billion Lights campaign, the Energy and Resources Institute has reached almost 3,000 villages in India and Africa. A local female entrepreneur is trained to set up a central charging station in a village using solar panels on rooves. She charges lightweight, LED solar lanterns, with a socket for charging mobile phones. After charging the lanterns for the whole village in the daytime, she rents them out at night. This provides the entire village with clean, efficient and reliable lighting, based on a sustainable, market-oriented model.

Sour turn in India-EU trade

The ban imposed by the European Union on the import of Alphonso mangoes and four varieties of vegetables from India until December 2015 after some consignments were found infested with “non-European fruit flies” has naturally upset India. Yet, merely insisting that the 28-member bloc’s action is “unilateral… without any meaningful official consultation,” as Commerce Minister Anand Sharma has done, will not do.

• The EU had notified India in March of its concerns. Whether the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority, which is tasked with ensuring that items of export are compliant in terms of sanitary and phyto-sanitary standards as set down by importing countries, was able to fully address them effectively, remains unclear. 
• It is also to be noted that scores of consignments of mangoes and vegetables shipped in 2013 had been found to be contaminated. Periodic problems that come up with respect to shrimp exports over contamination concerns, are relevant here. 

So what can be done :

1. India certainly needs to put in place fool-proof mechanisms for the examination and certification of export commodities to remove such taints once and for all. 

2. Necessary correctives need to be worked out with the involvement of technical and scientific bodies in order that in the lucrative but competitive export markets the country would establish its reputation as a reliable partner meeting health and phyto-sanitary standards.

3. On its part, the EU should ensure that any cause for a perception of its decision being an unfair one which smacks of a punitive approach and that would potentially jeopardise India-EU trade, is avoided.

T.N. rejects NIA investigation

The Tamil Nadu government on Thursday rejected the Centre’s offer to order a National Investigation Agency (NIA) probe into the twin blasts in the Bangalore-Guwahati Express at the Chennai Central station, making the Centre “stand-down” a team of detectives preparing to leave for Chennai, the Home Affairs Ministry said.

Director-General of Police, Tamil Nadu, Anoop Jaiswal said there was no Centre-State confrontation on the issue, wondering how two agencies could investigate one case.

Ministry sources expressed the apprehension that the decision could make other State governments also resist Central intervention in terrorism-related cases.

Filtering content on the internet

On May 5, the Supreme Court will hear Kamlesh Vaswani’s infamous anti-pornography petition again. The petition makes some rather outrageous claims. Watching pornography ‘puts the country’s security in danger’ and it is ‘worse than Hitler, worse than AIDS, cancer or any other epidemic,’ it says. This petition has been pending before the Court since February 2013, and seeks a new law that will ensure that pornography is exhaustively curbed.

The petition assumes that pornography causes violence against women and children. The fact remains that the causal link between violence against women and pornography is yet to be proven convincingly and remains the subject of much debate.

Mr. Vaswani could have, instead, encouraged the state to do more toward its international obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). CEDAW’s General Recommendation No. 19 is about violence against women and recommends steps to be taken to reduce violence against women. These include encouraging research on the extent, causes and effects of violence, and adopting preventive measures, such as public information and education programmes, to change attitudes concerning the roles and status of men and women.

Child pornography

Indian policy makers have been alive to this issue. The Information Technology Act (IT Act) contains a separate provision for material depicting children explicitly or obscenely, stating that those who circulate such content will be penalised. The IT Act also criminalises watching child pornography (whereas watching regular pornography is not a crime in India).

Intermediaries are obligated to take down child pornography once they have been made aware that they are hosting it. Organisations or individuals can proactively identify and report child pornography online. Other countries have tried, with reasonable success, systems using hotlines, verification of reports and co-operation of internet service providers to take down child pornography. However, these systems have also sometimes resulted in the removal of other legitimate content.

In the Vaswani case, the government has correctly explained to the Supreme Court that any greater attempt to monitor pornography is not technologically feasible. It has pointed out that human monitoring of content will delay transmission of data substantially, will slow down the Internet, and will also be ineffective, since the illegal content can easily be moved to other servers in other countries.