Author: cprindia

WATCH THE FULL VIDEO
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

Watch the full video of the virtual talk and panel discussion on ‘Topping the Glass Half Full: Opportunities for Regional Trade in South Asia’. The talk was delivered by Dr Sanjay Kathuria (Senior Visiting Fellow, CPR) who is the editor of the book, and was followed by a panel discussion featuring Ambassador Shyam Saran (Former Foreign Secretary & Senior Fellow, CPR); Dr Nagesh Kumar [Director and Head, South and South-West Asia (SSWA) Office, UNESCAP]; Dr Selim Raihan (Professor, Department of Economics, University of Dhaka); and chaired by Ambassador Gautam Mukhopadhaya (Senior Visiting Fellow, CPR).

It would be no overstatement to say that seventy years after the decolonisation of South Asia, economic integration of the region remains disappointing. Intraregional trade as a share of regional gross domestic product (GDP) hovers around only 1 percent in South Asia, versus 2.6 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa and about 11 percent in East Asia and the Pacific. Yet, world history has repeatedly shown trade to be a crucial tool for poverty reduction. Centered around the book A Glass Half Full: The Promise of Regional Trade in South Asia, this event discussed various challenges to regional economic integration and lessons that can be learned from some success stories.

AUDIO RECORDING OF A TALK BY ANANT MARIGANTI
URBAN SERVICES

Listen to full audio recording (above) by Anant Mariganti on how the waste economy and different forms of work relating to waste management interact with each other in the city of Hyderabad. With waste management being as much about urban governance as about urban informality (actors and institutions involved), the talk analyses the process in an urban setting through focusing on communities.

Mariganti is the Executive Director of the Hyderabad Urban Lab and a geographer with a PhD from the University of Minnesota.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE PANEL DISCUSSION HELD AS PART OF THE CLEARING THE AIR SEMINAR SERIES
AIR POLLUTION ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

On 7 March 2018, the Initiative on Climate, Energy and Environment (ICEE) at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) organized a panel discussion on ‘Municipal Solid Waste as a cause of Air Pollution’ as part of the ongoing Clearing the Air? Seminar Series on Delhi’s Air Pollution. The panelists were Ravi Agarwal, founder director of Toxics Link, Nalini Shekhar, co–founder of Hasiru Dala, and Dr Seema Awasthi, founder and director of ICUC Consultants Pvt. Ltd., and the panel was moderated by Arkaja Singh, Fellow, Centre for Policy Research.

The panel discussed some of the best practices on waste disposal that can help reduce exposure to airborne toxins from municipal solid waste. Some of the strategies suggested give primacy to waste workers, whereas others emphasize on technology, infrastructure and management.

We have identified some important points that came up during the panel discussion and presented them in the form of a Q&A below. Videos of the panel discussion and the power point presentations made by the speakers can be accessed here.

What are the locations and kinds of exposures to various kinds of pollutants, particularly air borne pollutants that take place in the total disposal cycle of solid waste?
Ravi Agarwal (RA): The IIT-Kanpur report (Sharma and Dixit, 2016) attributes 8-9% to open burning of municipal solid waste as a source of PM10 and PM2.5. Waste is a very complex material which emits a cocktail of pollutants including harmful gases other than the classic pollutants and the regularly monitored PM10 and PM2.5. However, most of them are not accounted for due to the complexity of the waste stream. Dioxin is a highly toxic chemical pollutant generated from incinerators. While worldwide there are incineration standards, in India, despite very high dioxin exposure with serious health implications, there have been till recently no regulations for emission of dioxins. There are several dispersed sources of air pollutants from waste which are also not yet measured.

Most regulations are aimed at the end of the pipe emissions, undermining the complexity of the waste stream and the potential of pollution from each stage of the waste disposal cycle.

Seema Awasthi (SA): Nearly 35 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent of greenhouse gases like methane are estimated to be produced from dumpsites annually worldwide (as per the data from the International Solid Waste Association in 2015) The effluent gases from open waste burning include smoke, black carbon and other toxic fumes with low levels of dioxins and furans.

What are the pollution standards and regulations that govern waste disposal? Do they adequately consider the risk of air pollution? What are the main loopholes in the current regulatory and governance system?
RA: The existing standards are technological standards pertaining to the end of the pipe emissions reduction in the waste cycle. The new MSW Rules of 2016 acknowledged the need to formulate standards at each step in the complex waste stream. It is also the first time that the incineration standards were incorporated into the rules. However, there is a lack of will to support campaigns like that create awareness about the environmental dangers of open burning of waste.

The Sukhdev Vihar/ Okhla Timarpur incinerator is the one where a project with high capital investment was permitted without any environmental approvals.

A research document ‘Be careful with that cure’ by Toxics Link on dioxins emissions from medical waste incineration led to the change in incineration owing to cost of standards for dioxins. The Biomedical Waste Rules were formulated in 1998, and these were subsequently amended in 2016. This is also probably the only incineration law in the world that still prohibits the incineration of chlorinated waste across different waste categories.

Formulating environmental standards is easy. But to acquire skills and equipment, and attain a high quality regulatory system requires capacity building on the ground which is missing in the Indian scenario. For example, there is a 0.1 ng TEQ (nanogram Toxic Equivalents) limit on dioxin and furans but there is no ability to comply with it in India. Furthermore, in India, importance is given to waste disposal rather than reducing airborne emissions. There is a rush to install high cost technologies without adequate understanding of their regulatory or operation ecosystems. Decisions on using the technology for managing waste need to be based on logical assessment of the suitability of the proposed technology in terms of deriving the best cost to benefit ratio. High end, expensive technologies are often promoted by the business lobby. For example, plasma technology was proposed for waste to energy generation by a company in Gujarat that managed to get the standards for this technology incorporated in the 2016 MSW rules. However, plasma is a very high end technology, and internationally is used for destruction of chemical weapons. Its usability for MSW management in India is doubtful.

Standard making is a semi political, semi science based process and is also not always linked with health data; but is often designed on the basis of what is perceived to be achievable. There is no credible primary study on actual emissions from waste or their impacts on health.

SA: According to the 2016 MSW Rules, door to door management system should be in place that ensures collection of segregated waste. The responsibility to collect waste segregated as dry waste, wet waste and domestic hazardous waste (including sanitary waste etc.) lies with the Urban Local Bodies (ULBs). As per the 2016 Rules, the bulk generators have to manage the waste they generate, whereas the city government is concerned with the waste generated by the households and small commercial units. The waste collectors/pickers transport the waste to the primary collection point. In big cities, the waste is further compacted in transfer stations or is transported to a processing facility. As per the rules, organic waste or waste with high calorific value should not be dumped or disposed.

Funds for installation of required infrastructure for waste management have been provided under the Swachh Bharat Mission. However, the challenge remains in sustainable operation of the projects and generation of funds for operation and maintenance by the city governments.

What are the main technologies and approaches for dealing with municipal solid waste?
SA: The philosophy of 3Rs – Reduce, Reuse and Recycle – is an efficient way to manage waste. Segregation implies more efficient waste management which reduces the amount of waste reaching landfills; thereby reducing the amount of waste that may have to be incinerated, leading to reductions in emissions. Another method is ‘Zero landfilling’ which aims at processing all the waste before it reaches the landfill. This concept also helps in addressing the issue of paucity of land for landfill sites in growing cities.

Rules prohibit the dumping of organic waste with high calorific into the landfill site. Biomethanation is a viable technical solution for processing such organic waste. Various technologies for incineration can be applied for dry waste and mixed waste. Refuse derived fuel (RDF) method is used for dry and wet waste where the waste is segregated, dried and made into pellets which are then used as fuel.

The JNNURM promoted windrow composting as a method of efficient management of organic waste. The compost generated from most of the windrow composting plants, however, failed to meet the standards of compost that could be used for agricultural purposes. Hence, the smaller cities are now encouraged to use segregate wet waste for composting. For large cities, currently, waste-to-energy options are being promoted mainly because they enable handling large quantities of waste in smaller areas, reducing volume significantly, generating only 15-20% of rejects in the form of ash and inerts. Simultaneously, we get energy as the end product for which the Government of India provides subsidy to help make the project finacially viable.

Biomining with scientific closure is an option being explored to manage the huge quantities of waste lying in the open dumpsites in almost every city of the country. Through biomining, one can segregate and recover useful material lying within the big waste mounds, thereby reducing waste footprint, resulting in reclamation of land that could be used for construction of scientifc landfill or waste processing facility. However, biomining is an expensive process and can only be adopted by those municipalities which have adequate capital for setting-up the required infrastructure.

50% of Bangalore households are now segregating their waste. How has this come about? What has been the role of the city authorities, and the waste workers, both formal and informal, in achieving this?
Nalini Shekhar: The informal waste pickers working with Hasirudala are filling the gap by providing a waste management system, which the local government could not provide. With the help of the waste pickers, 1050 tonnes of waste is being managed, which is resulting in saving 84 crore rupees per annum for the city. The waste pickers are recognized as extremely skilled labor and in Bangalore city they have been issued identity cards with the city logo and signature of the municipal commissioner, on the initiative of Hasirudala. ‘No burning of waste’ campaign of Hasirudala was the first campaign centered around the role of waste pickers. Bangalore is the first city to have a MoU with the waste pickers. Around 80% of the city’s waste is no longer burnt by the waste pickers.

Hasirudala has managed to involve the government. The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) helped in setting up of nearly 180 dry waste collection centers in about two years. Every ward now has a dry waste collection center for non organic waste. All these dry waste collection centers are managed by waste pickers. Dry waste is collected twice a week in every ward with the help of waste pickers. Further, the waste pickers are given work orders in their name to collect dry waste, while the wet/organic waste is collected by contractors.

The three-way waste collection, i.e., dry waste, wet waste and sanitary waste, was also initiated in Bangalore with the help of waste pickers. The separate category of sanitary waste came into being in 2017 with the intervention of Hasirudala. It is considered as municipal solid waste while being collected, and is considered as biomedical waste for disposal.

Reduction of waste is also important and Karnataka is the first state to pass a legislation banning one time use plastic. Waste workers showed readiness to give up on making more money out of more waste collected at the cost of public health. The ban has only been successful due to citizen participation.

The reject waste collected from households has reduced from 310 g per household per day to 95 g due to better segregation of waste. This was the initiative of the for-profit HasiruDala Innovation Pvt Ltd catering to 33,000 households a day. The waste pickers are not only recognized as skilled labour force but are also seen as entrepreneurs and Hasirudala’s interventions have targeted their innovation skills in all its programs.

What are the challenges concerning location and maintenance of landfill sites? What are the possible solutions to saturated landfill sites?
SA: The issue of solid waste management has become so pertinent in the present times because the quantum of waste generated has increased tremendously. Limited land and resource availability with the municipalities makes waste management a challenge in big cities. It is also an issue with smaller cities which lack the resources and infrastructure for efficient waste management.

In our country, only 70% of the total waste is collected and only 20% of the total waste generated is treated. The remaining 80% finds its way to the landfill (Planning Commission, Govt. of India. 2014). Nearly 90% of the population in South Asia does not have access to waste collection and disposal, as per the data from the International Solid Waste Association in 2015.

Landfill fires are a big cause of concern as they are a source of air pollution. Decomposition of organic waste, in the absence of oxygen, generates methane and carbon dioxide. Methane has a high calorific value and makes the landfill site vulnerable accidental fires. High temperature and pressure conditions are also conducive for starting a fire within a landfill. Burning of waste to reduce its quantum is also sometimes the only option for smaller cities with inadequate infrastructure for waste processing.

According to the Rules, the waste rich in organic contentment, recyclable waste and dry waste with high calorific content should not reach the landfill sites and has to be recycled or processed to a useful end product. In the case of saturated dumpsite, the dumpsite should be properly closed following the prescribed scientific procedure.

In scientifically operated landfill sites, the excavated space is covered with an impervious liner to prevent groundwater pollution and the waste, strictly the rejects, is covered daily with 15 cm soil layer after being dumped. After the landfill is full to its capacity, it is closed with an impervious liner (clay, HTPE etc) followed by soil cover and green grass cover. However, due to the lack of resources the standard procedure is not followed. The Gorai site in Mumbai is the only site where a landfill site has not only been successfully closed but the CDM credits are being used for managing the project.

FULL VIDEO OF CPR-CSH WORKSHOP
CLIMATE RESEARCH

Watch the full video (above) of the talk by Ankit Bhardwaj and Radhika Khosla where they present a comprehensive literature review that synthesises the growing research and salience of the topic. In doing so, they describe the recent trends and characteristics that mark Indian cities’ approaches to climate change.

A deeper perspective has been shown by examining the case of a single city, Rajkot and describing how this second city is using existing governance arrangements to promote climate efforts, and the ways in which the efforts can be scaled. The workshop ends with a discussion on the mainstreaming of these emerging climate actions into the broader set of urban development goals.

Ankit Bhardwaj is a Research Associate at CPR’s Initiative on Climate, Energy and Environment and works on characterising India’s multiple transitions and using a multi-objective approach to integrate climate and development objectives at the city level in India

Radhika Khosla is a Fellow at CPR and works on the integrated nature of India’s energy sector to examine the linkages between energy, development and climate change, particularly in urban areas.

The question and answer session that followed can be accessed here. Find all available videos of previous workshops here.

A TRIBUTE BY BHANU JOSHI ON HIS FIRST DEATH ANNIVERSARY
OBITUARIES

Kallidaikurichi Chidambarakrishnan Sivaramakrishnan died on 28th May 2015. On his first death anniversary, Bhanu Joshi remembers him.

What is the institutional architecture within which we foresee India’s urbanisation? What framework of governance – public or private do we think would be able to provide better services to the urban India?

Kallidaikurichi Chidambarakrishnan Sivaramakrishnan or KCS, as many of us called him, was amongst the first to ask and continued engaging with this question over his lifetime. Chief Executive of the Calcutta Metropolitan Development Authority, and secretary in both the Ministry of Urban Development and the Ministry of Commerce, Professor and chairman of the Centre for Policy Research, he was one of the pioneering interpreters of urbanisation in modern India.

A man whose commentary and work ranged from delimitation to the environment and climate change, from Ganga water management to South Asian cooperation, KCS was most valued for his contribution to understanding decentralisation in India. He was involved in the making of the watershed 65th Constitutional Bill, which later became the 74th Constitutional Amendment (CAA). The longest amendment to the Constitution of India, it was the 74th CAA, which mandated the creation of municipalities across urban areas.

Perspectives and Approaches

The numerous books, journal and popular writing on decentralised urban governance by KCS employed three concomitant perspectives – historical, legal and political.

He assigned a great importance to historical continuities in his analysis. For him, India’s modern conception of devolution had an antecedent in the nineteenth-century colonial rule. While colonial local self-government provided a forum for representation and practice, it was the provincial, state and central legislatures which controlled their powers, finances and functions. As KCS writes, “In the struggle for independence, urban growth was viewed usually in the frame of large metropolitan or industrial cities and all the want, squalor, slum growth and the blight they presented.”[i] Post-independence, the local government remained a lesser form of government with similar control exhibited by the centre and the state.[ii]

The second perspective was the defining of institutional powers and legislative domains of local governments, produced by the coalescence of law and legal jurisprudence. Although judgements delivered by High Courts and the Supreme Court were central to many of his own arguments; in many of his writings, he was critical of the views taken by the Courts.[iii] He believed, there were limits to which adjudication in the Courts of Law can help the process. Besides, “Courts prefer to dwell upon the letter of the law, rather than the spirit, however relevant it may be for a proper understanding and interpretation of the law. The remedy may not lie in the Court, but elsewhere.”[iv] That ‘elsewhere,’ lay in the polity and the process of people’s participation. He believed, that India’s decentralisation project cannot bypass the messiness of politics and people’s participation.[v] It is a genuine participative process, which is deeply contested that brings a strong and powerful elected government responsible for its successes and failures.

The Question of Governance

KCS were Secretary in the Ministry of Urban Development, when the 65th Constitutional Amendment Bill was brought to the Lok Sabha by the Rajiv Gandhi government. The 74th CAA, modelled on the Bill drafted earlier, opened up avenues of political participation by creating a new political class in big and small cities in India. “We thought we were on the cusp of a revolution,”[vi] said KCS in a public lecture in 2012. The optimism created made it clear that at the local level the elected representatives were going to demand an increasing share in the political domain. “As this demand turns more vocal and insistent, changes in the legal and administrative base of the Nagarpalikas will become inevitable.”[vii]

Twenty years later, the tides changed and there was a recognition that the 74th CAA though path breaking, remained a restrictive framework. His work on the metropolitan regions in India is revealing on the imaginative restrictions imposed by the Amendment. Referring to the metropolitan regions in India; an entity like the Mumbai Metropolitan region comprising of areas beyond the city corporation, to include both rural and urban, multi-municipal and non-municipal bodies, he argued that, metropolitan governance cannot be compartmentalised as rural or urban but there has to be strong intra-municipal coordination, inclusion of the rural local governments and a direct link between the various state and central ministries and the region. The idea that the problems of a ‘big’ city (and hence the region) are of, and restricted to, that city alone is flawed. Transport, water supply, garbage disposal, planned development are not city centred and extends beyond and have to consider the region as a whole. The “74th constitutional amendment of 1993 has failed to visualise the dynamics of large, complex urban formations,”[viii] he surmised. In his last published chapter, he is less charitable, “notwithstanding the initial objectives of enlarging the funnel of participation and providing for a wider system of directly elected representative bodies, in actual effect the amendment has failed to fulfil this objective.”[ix]

And here, then, lies the biggest contribution of KCS. By grappling with the question of the institutional architecture of urban governance, he posed profound questions on how should our cities grow. His body of scholarship leaves a reference point for us to ask – who should head our cities and what structures – elected or unelected should plan for our city? What forms of people’s participation do we imagine for our cities?

Within the wide canvas of indulging the urban, there has been a growth; positively so, on understanding the various facets of the subject. Housing, migration, economic geography, role of land, issues of livelihoods, urban systems, provision of services to urban populations especially the urban poor, urban violence and exclusion, and urban infrastructure have been investigated with great detail. Indeed, these studies provide a lens to subjects hitherto unexplored. Yet, the core question of urban governance, on which arguably, many of these are not only contingent but are greatly affected, has received limited attention over the years. Understandably, the term ‘urban governance’ is not homogenous, and cannot be thought to be panacea for all things bad. However, understanding and advocating greater autonomy to the city, a politically accountable leadership and an inclusive city government which becomes the forum for planning the city are the backbone on which exigencies of urban systems, livelihoods, service delivery tilt on.

His Legacy

In the summer of 2014, KCS was appointed the Chairman of the “Expert Committee on the New Capital for Andhra Pradesh” by the Ministry of Home Affairs. As the Committee was about to depart on a weeklong trip of the newly carved state, KCS mentioned his deteriorating health condition and a no travel dictum issued by the doctors. Nonetheless, constant updates were taken from the members even at wee hours and a few visits were made to Hyderabad. Notwithstanding a jump in his medical regime, the Committee submitted its report much before the deadline.

The report of the committee left the decision to the political leadership of Andhra Pradesh, reaffirming his fundamental belief that in a democracy it is the people who matter. He believed, that a democracy will come to terms not by an orderly progress of law but only by creating platforms where battle will be fought contests would be held. It is in a question, which KCS posed to a gathering in Mumbai that offers a peek into his legacy; “Before you think of becoming Shanghai, shouldn’t Mumbai start thinking of becoming Mumbai first? Like everywhere else, we can lay the contours of battle – It is that much easy for us to promulgate victory then join the battle. The reason why I am spending so much time is because I think we are capable, we shouldn’t be sterile. We need to think out of the box.”

VIEW FROM THE STATES
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

Watch the video (above) of the discussion on ‘US Presidential Elections: View from the States’ with Representative Jay Kaufman (Massachusetts House of Representatives) and Senator Curtis Bramble (Utah State Senate).

FULL VIDEO OF THE PRESENTATION AND PANEL DISCUSSION
ELECTION STUDIES POLITICS

Watch the full video (above) of a short data-driven presentation by Neelanjan Sircar unpacking the results of the Gujarat elections, followed by a panel discussion between Prashant Jha, Mahesh Langa, Ruhi Tewari and Gilles Verniers.

Bringing together experts from academia and media, the event analyses BJP’s victory in Gujarat, and its relevance for national politics in India.

Neelanjan Sircar is Senior Fellow at CPR.

Prashant Jha is Associate Editor at Hindustan Times.

Mahesh Langa is Senior Associate Editor at The Hindu.

Ruhi Tewari is Associate Editor at ThePrint.

Gilles Verniers is Co-Director of the Trivedi Centre for Political Data at Ashoka University.

The question and answer session that followed can be accessed here. The presentation from the event can be accessed here.