Monday 26 December 2016

Crystallising the vision for Swatch Bharath


The lofty goals and aspirations of Swatch Bharath Abhiyaan in India are stuck in a quagmire of disoriented publicity. A profligate publicity budget alone isn’t enough to cleanse the country. While the intention and goal of the Clean India Mission are taintless, almost holy – I mean - the mission to clean the Ganges, there is an urgently felt need for policy initiatives to support the Clean India Mission.

Only one doubt nags me. The Union Minister for water resources - in-charge of Cleaning Ganges Ms. Uma Bharathi – controversial at the best of times - actually claimed in an interview to the BBC that the incumbent NDA government will be able to cleanse the Ganges before the 2019 Loksabha Elections! It smacked not just of extreme political opportunism but betrayed the blissful ignoramus that she is! Or could it be her naiive faith in an idolised and popular Prime Minister?

Alternative use for secondary waste generated from say plastics is the biggest challenge. Standardisation is needed for packaging ware for all goods and services. Protocols and standards need to be imbibed from EU standards of waste management. Use of plastics need to be reduced significantly but banning < 20 micron plastics alone is at best a feeble attempt. Execution of the ban is the proverbial proof of the pudding. We need not just alternative use for degenerate packaging ware but new standardised packaging wares, tax incentives for manufacture of alternative packaging ware, tax incentives for reuse of resources like bottles and glassware, all aimed at reducing waste generation.

Think out of the box to come up with biodegradable soluble detergents, drastically reduce toilet consumables so that incinerable wastes are reduced correspondingly… aiming @ < 5 kilos of incinerable toilet wastes per capita per annum in India alone. That’s a goal that needs universal commitment among Indians. It needs support from the bureaucracy, political class, civil society, media, citizens’ groups, industrialists, and a sustainable timeline sans political opportunism at the hustings.

Policy support is needed for reinventing uses for plastics, paper, bottles / glassware, packaging material as well as biodegradable waste… all of which need to be segregated at source. Composting plants generating mulch need buyers. Transport infrastructure, tax infrastructure, tax initiatives are all needed for effective Solid Waste Management.

Awareness in the population should not be TV apologies to politicians, rather the need of the hour are crisp Public Service Announcements that instruct people to segregate according to statutory norms. Best practices evolved in neighbourhood apartment complexes or residential colonies need to be analysed in the media through two way traffic which can be ideally supported by the Internet and social media … that enables decentralised stake holder participation in governance. It is an ideal fit for modernity. Let us put this to practise instead of just making glib New Year resolutions!

Urban planning of professional international mettle is needed … something which altruistic or parochial nationalism will undo. Urban planners must make efforts to incentivise manufacture of biodegrable detergents or soluble effluents.

Composting pits management in the neighbourhoods should be channelised and coordinated for collection as it makes life easier for the hapless pourakarmikas or street sweepers of the municipal bodies… a mandate for urban elected bodies and urban planners. Legislative support to this effect is expeditiously called for. Political will needs to be harnessed to channelise field experiences into policy initiatives that can be exemplified and scaled up.  Only then can we stop the archaic landfill approach to solid waste management.
Malini Shankar


Malini Shankar is a photojournalist, radio broadcaster, author blogger and documentary filmmaker based in Bangalore India. 

Thursday 2 June 2016

Zoos are a combination of animal rights and wildlife conservation

The killing of a western lowland gorilla in the Cincinnati zoo to protect the life of a child which found itself inside the moat of the Gorilla enclosure has sparked off a raging controversy. It has pitted animal rights activists against conservationists.

None questions the safety of the child which possibly accidentally fell into the moat in the gorilla enclosure. It will no doubt be interesting to scientists of another genre – psychologists – to study the impact the incident had on the child’s psychology and emotional scars of the incident. Why and how did this happen? One thing is sure: the mother of the child was not holding the child’s hand firmly: That tantamounts to negligent parenting. Period.

As for the killing of a gorilla (which in animal right’s parlance was an inmate but in bureaucratic parlance is an ‘exhibit’) The question is one of ethics: How can a custodian – a zookeeper meant to be the saviour of endangered species have killed it? The incident also throws light on the scientific insignificance of zoos and reminds us of the need to do away with zoos as amusement / entertainment destinations.

But closer examination of the footage that is emerging from viral videos on social media points to the gorilla Harambe looking into an opening of the moat and then dragging the child to a wider area of the moat. http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/mom-at-zoo-hes-dragging-my-son-i-cant-watch-this-1414624?pfrom=home-topstories It points fingers at bad maintenance / standards in zoo keeping.  

That means the child was washed into the gorilla enclosure after having fallen somewhere close-by.  Inevitably questions arise about the callousness of the parents. Ofcourse accidents happen but parenting is not just about glamour baby showers and photo shoots of baby bumps as pregnancy is called these days. 

The incident smacks of amusement of visitors in zoos, wholly undoing the aims of captive breeding and research on habitat of endangered wildlife. It is in this context that puritan conservationists are blaming the parents of the child which was injured in the incident. There is no doubt that the parents will be questioned and charged for negligent parenting and abetting cruelty to protected wild animals  based on relevant laws in USA.

I daresay the golf courses and helipads in and around Kruger National Park in South Africa and Masai Mara in Kenya are recipes for pending disasters.

Harambe, - like all zoo kept animals - deprived of its will and self-esteem had reconciled - in quiet adaptation for food security, but didn’t realise that even such a docile surrender will prejudice its custodians justifying their killing of a captive Gorilla based on an unprecedented mistaken perception of the aggressive nature of the beast.

The United States of America is known for enforcement of its legal regimes and indeed it serves its purpose in the current context of triggering an uncalled for killing of an endangered specie (a western lowland gorilla) meant to have been protected by the zoo keepers and custodians. For it had been plucked from its habitat and gene pool only to serve the needs of human activities, that too because elaborate state infrastructure, conservation laws and conniving politicians are unable to prevent poaching in its endemic habitat.

Could it be that Harambe took the child into its limbs only because it was deprived of motherhood? That was my first thought when I saw the footage Sunday evening on Television News. The need for animal psychologists in zoos is underlined in this incident. Had there been a trained animal psychologist at hand; if the zoo had maintained records of its weight and diet, tranquilising would have been easier and more instantly effective than killing.

The zoo director’s explanation that in the circumstances it was the right thing to do, begs answers to the questions of zoo keeping and wildlife database management.  

Zoos have been established (and are still being tolerated by conservationists) because they are meant to be ex situ conservation and for propagation of captive breeding of endangered species, research and multilateral exchanges of endangered species for the above two purposes. Rehabilitation of captive animals may be added as an afterthought.

Zoos were never meant to be cruel enclosures to deprive animals of their freedom of movement for the amusement of visitors in the enclosures; especially in emerging economies; cramping enclosures debilitate the confidence and emotional well-being of endangered animals.  On this link (http://www.indiatogether.org/2013/jun/env-animals.htm) this author has extrapolated animal cruelty and juxtaposes how and why animal rights cannot be separated from wildlife conservation.

In the name of studying stimulation induced behaviour of captive animals, zoos, even in the Western World make animals beg for food. This not only demeans the self-esteem of captive wild animals and destroys their instinct to hunt, but leads to skewed behaviour. Genetic isolation and inbreeding are known to occur in captive animals… again questioning the purpose of zoo keeping. The occurrence of human induced infections in zoo animals is also well documented.

Questioning the negligent parents and possible / hopeful charge-sheeting them for negligence will now strengthen the case against zoo keeping. It is on grounds of ethics of bad zoo keeping and unethical custodial killing of an endangered species that the tragic incident needs to be condemned, reflected and re-examined for its efficacy and purpose.  


Suggested further reading:
Malini Shankar

Malini Shankar is a wildlife photojournalist, radio broadcaster, documentary filmmaker, blogger and author based in Bangalore India.

Thursday 26 May 2016

The Green ink is an attempt to create awareness on environmental issues plaguing the South.


In the First Earth Summit held in Rio in 1992 new themes concepts and vocabulary or jargon was introduced to the polity: “Sustainable Development” meant development would not leapfrog into the jet age but will be undertaken in realistic march of progress without harming the environment. “Mitigate climate change” meant - let us try to stop anthropocentric factors of climate change and global warming induced by human induced eco detrimental development. 

Climate change adaptation meant let us adopt such means as to decrease global warming and thus climate change. “Stake holder participation” meant people ought to ideally benefit by way of willing participation in environmental conservation.  Starry eyed journalists covering the summit in the age when electronic media was not as we know it today, held the dream of ushering change through the power of the pen alone. And indeed the power of the pen has blossomed without deferring to the glamour of electronic media.

Little did these journalists realise it takes more than just the power of the pen to visualise these complex themes… developmental journalists were the greatest advocates of growth trajectories, balance or sustainability be damned.

As unsustainable growth in terms of fossil fuel consumption for the automobile industry and other consumer electronics increased the economic growth in terms of GDP GNP and tax returns increased and politicians and consumer were both equally pleased and the journalists started losing their starry eyed dreams they saw in Rio. New Delhi was back where it all started – one of the most polluted cities in the world! World Bank advisories UN policy guidelines were all ignored. Until one maverick politician – Delhi’s anti-establishment new chief minister introduced an experiment in sustainable development - something called “Odd Even”: number plate based traffic regulations to mitigate the winter fog could not be discerned from vehicular smog in one of the world’s most polluted cities.

Yet, it was a perceptive, farsighted, visionary, captivating, and politically astute masterstroke attempting sustainable development, mitigating unsustainable vertical economic growth with a compatible green regime; and it was actually welcomed by the much harassed and exasperated Delhizen. The results of the odd even scheme – in terms of quantifiable emission reduction targets is yet to be extrapolated by climate experts (part of the reason for the extreme fog in November 2015 in Delhi was the El Nino induced hydrometeorological calamity – fog: and, climatologists conveniently undermine the geological dimensions of climate change); however the scheme has captured the imagination of the political class in the Third World.  

Thanks to lack of standardisation in emissions for decades of “economic growth fuelled by fossil fuel economy” time is now ripe to introduce drastic measures in cutting vehicular emissions in the emerging economies.

Replicating “Odd Even” schemes ain’t enough. Indonesia has gone a step fuether. They register odd even number plates according to regulation. Mature political vision would call for implementing a cycle friendly infrastructure policy to substitute fossil fuel economy.  Insurance policies need to be reworded, incentives for the hydrogen economy and cycling regime – including cycle lanes, traffic signals, cycle parking plots, security for cycle parking plots have to be introduced. Roads, highways and cycle corridors have to be designed and constructed in a cycle friendly manner for a cycle friendly regime. Prime Minister Modi never hostile to some good publicity ought to set apart political parochialism and encourage his government’s pet infrastructure projects to come up with cycling lanes on district roads, urban roads, state and national highways. Existing road infrastructure especially in cities in South Asia should suffice for no more than 1/ 5th of the existing traffic volumes. Cars have to be used only for physically challenged citizens and frail populace. The fit working class should either pedal it up or use one of seven modes of public transport in every city. A plural public transport regime should include Metro rail, trams, suburban trains, four tiered public bus system, taxis, auto rickshaws, radio taxis and car pools. Radio taxis should be regulated through policy / economic incentives / disincentives etc to change present booking structures to car-pooling.


Cycling increases health fitness and reduces dependence on fossil fuel besides, it drastically decreases emissions. Vehicle manufacturing should be export oriented atleast for a decade, as that not just increases the foreign exchange earnings but also increases standardisation and reduces traffic congestion. 

Ms