Author: cprindia

People facing/likely to face the negative impacts of land use change may not communicate their grievances immediately. When these impacts are communicated to the project entity or the media or the government and collective action is taken towards addressing the impacts, they become cases of conflicts. The strategies that communities deploy during the course of a conflict could range from a single one-time action for a single remedy to engaging with multiple strategies for one or different remedies.  For instance, an affected community may choose to go to court to seek directions for increasing compensations or addressing pollution harms. Another group of affected people may approach one government agency for addressing water contamination and/or take to the streets to resist additional acquisition of land and/or engage the media to create awareness about the loss of livelihoods. These can take place all at the same time or at different stages of the conflict and the project. Below is a tabular synthesis of key strategies used in the 75 cases of conflicts, as reported in the media, analysed for each of the study countries- India, Indonesia and Myanmar.

* T: Total number of cases in which a particular remedy has been used; S: Used singly; C: Used in combination

The above analysis makes it clear that most often communities deploy multiple strategies. Presented below are examples of how these strategies have been used in the three countries. The examples demonstrate that there are only a few instances when a strategy can be linked with a clear success. Most often they stop short at certain interim outcomes such as an inquiry or an investigation or they start to head towards a specific outcome only to be turned around at a later stage.

Protests

India: The proposed amendments to the new 2013 Land Acquisition Act in December 2014 led to a nationwide farmers’ protest in India. In August 2015, in light of protests and ahead of the Bihar state elections, the government of India held back the proposed amendments and referred the matter to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC).

Myanmar: In Shan State in 2016, 100 farmers from Ye Pu village in Taunggyi planted on 2,000 acres of confiscated land. Between 2010 and 2015, despite the land being confiscated the farmers were allowed to plant on the land on a payment of 10,000 Kyats per acre. In May 2016, the farmers were asked to sign documents transferring the land to the army. These 100 farmers didn’t sign the document and continued planting. The army filed a lawsuit against them for trespassing.

Litigation

Indonesia: Responding to a civil suit, the Bandung administrative court decided in April 2017 that expansion plans for the Cirebon coal-fired power plant in West Java were in violation of the local spatial planning law. The court ordered the project’s environmental license to be revoked.

India: A case against the Parsa East Ketan Besan (PEKB) coal mine was filed before the National Green Tribunal, the special court for environmental cases, and a judgment suspending the forest diversion approval was given. This was challenged by the operating company before the Supreme Court, where the court allowed mining to continue even as the environment ministry was to review its recommendation. The matter has been subjudice since 2014.

Administrative complaints and appeals

Indonesia: In the case of BNJM coalmine in East Barito in Central Kalimantan, the local environment agency on request from communities, collected samples from the river being polluted by the mine refuse. However, this was done after the community of Lalap and Bentont villages had filed multiple complaints with photographs and media reports on the siltation of the river. In this case, strong evidence of the violation of environment laws helped in getting the government to take action.

India: In the case of the proposal to construct the Tadadi port in Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka, local villagers and environmentalists primarily engaged with the District Collector and the regulatory institutions to influence the decision on whether the port should be granted approval. Although the environment ministry’s expert committee recommended approval in December 2016, the project had not been issued a formal clearance letter and has not initiated construction activity.

International Redress

Myanmar: Thilawa is one of the few projects from the delta region in which international redress has been tried. The Thilawa Social Development Group (TSDG) contacted the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) seeking rehabilitation and relocation facilities as per its guidelines. In response, JICA increased the compensation and improved facilities at the relocation site. Although the relocation site still falls short on many of JICA’s own prescriptions, the efforts resulted in certain corrections.

Indonesia: An example of seeking international redress is the case of Batang Thermal Power Plant. In December 2016, the community approached the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), the key financer with a petition against the plant. In response, the JBIC visited the site and met with the community but claimed that there was no evidence supporting people’s complaints.

Media campaigns/reporting

Indonesia: Media reporting has always been seen in combination with more than one strategy. Because of constant media scrutiny of Batang Thermal Power Plant and Jakarta Bay Reclamation Project along with the protests against the two, the work on the projects has been slow.

India: This has been an important strategy for affected people, especially when they are working with national and international NGOs and researchers. Two prominent examples of this are visible in the strategies used to address conflicts in the Vedanta bauxite mine in Niyamgiri, Odisha and the actions against setting up of the coal mine in Mahan, Madhya Pradesh. Local struggles were supported by national and international media reporting and public campaigns seeking support against setting up of these projects.

Myanmar: Both the local and international media have kept the issue of land confiscations alive. Big cases such as the Letpadaung mine and Myitsone dam and campaigns against the thermal power projects have been on the radar of the media. Media has been key in influencing certain court cases as well.

While these are only a few strategies, affected communities combine these with several other strategies. Political advocacy, participation in administrative procedure such as public hearings, approaching the project owner, are other ways to seek redress. The study, Understanding Land Conversion, Social Impacts and Legal Remedies in Asia, through the country reports, provides an extensive account of how and when each of the strategies has been used. Through the case studies it tries to explore the question of why certain strategies are chosen and how factors such as stage of the conflict, desired remedies, communities’ capacity and agency and political and policy developments influence this choice.

This is the second blog based on the study carried out by the CPR-Namati Environmental Justice Program, and supported by a grant from IDRC, Canada.

The other pieces in the series can be accessed below:

• Understanding the Impacts of Land Use Change
• Understanding the Outcomes and Remedies sought for impacts of Land Use Change
• Detailed Studies of cases of Land Use Change Conflicts: Part I
• Detailed Studies of cases of Land Use Change Conflicts: Part II

The current government’s steady push on digitising governance follows decades of such interventions. A new Accountability India series chronicles the experiences of former senior bureaucrat TR Raghunanandan on what it has taken to implement a system-wide change, and where the gaps have been.

• In ‘Wither, e-Governance’, Raghunanandan asks the crucial question of whether innovations in e-Governance will indeed make the government more responsive and accountable to the people.
• In the second part of the series, he talks about the introduction of desktop computers in government offices and how the transition began with only some officials understanding the full potential of this new technology in increasing efficiency. In ‘Spreading Spreadsheets’, he goes on to recount the value of spreadsheets in removing red tape and easy access to data. Yet, nearly three decades later, the large majority of people in the government have not taken to such innovative tools.
• In ‘MISRA – and the era of cute acronyms’, Raghunanandan recounts his experience of reforming land records in Karnataka using MISRA, an interface he and his team created. At the time, reporting protocols of land administration had begun to fail. Less attention paid to the daily tasks of land record maintenance, coupled with staff shortages and the expansion of welfare responsibilities, was beginning to weaken the land records system. The resultant confusion and uncertainties about land ownership had the potential to derail the entire economic base for the rural economy. As a solution, Raghunandan and team established a computer-aided system that would completely replace the manual system that was in place.
• In another experience, he discusses his stint with the tobacco board and how the computer operator was key to the integrity of the system which set quotas and imposed upper limits on what a farmer could sell. It took very little time for computer operators to hack the software. Then, for a price, farmers who exceeded quotas would be able to sell their extra tobacco.
• Thus, while establishing good e-Governance infrastructure is essential, the human capital that goes in maintenance and implementation cannot be overlooked. As Raghunanandan points out in his next blog ‘’Grasp’ing the Zilla Parishad’, the champions of e-Governance move on even before the systems they develop are entrenched in government processes.
• He closes the series with a thought provoking look on the dichotomy in the government’s enthusiasm for e-Governance in ‘Attitudes that block e-governance’. He asks if the government is a lot more cautious when it comes to transparent service delivery while this is not the case when making transactions from the citizens to government (such as tax paying) easier.

What kind of economic processes do we see emerging in small towns?

We can summarise the multiple and complex economic processes playing out in small towns into four broad types. Locally, these four ideal-types are interlaced with each other:

• Small towns are incorporated into metropolitan and large cities,
• Small towns are entrepreneurial, resilient and innovative localities,
• Small towns are ordinary market towns,
• Small towns are large villages that expand and grow including a work-force moving away from the farm sector.

What are the main characteristics of small towns under the influence of metropolitan expansion?

There are a number of places that are growing due to the diffusion and re-localisation of economic activities in the peripheries of large cities – both of these activities are in a phase of rapid expansion.

Diffusion: A heterogeneous amalgam of investments in infrastructure, real estate, commercial ventures, industrial parks and educational institutions surround small towns, which, in turn, become central places, i.e., nodes and sites of agglomeration and not just for accessing markets and services. In this case, the agency of local actors is limited. The urban transformation depends of such localities depends on their attractiveness seen in terms of:

• Accessibility and location (new roads, mass transportation, etc.),
• Cost of land,
• Local tolerance to pollution,
• Availability of a labour force and its willingness to accept the offered working conditions, often characterised by low wages, daily contracts and a weak level of unionisation.

Often, the weakness of the local government in enforcement, with its limited capability, becomes an added advantage in terms of attractiveness.

Over time, however, the physical planning of metropolitan regions, megaprojects, Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and real estate promoters’ appetite for new land opportunities can be destabilising factors for existing flourishing clusters of activities that depend on intensive workforce, inherited knowledge and local capital (such as the Kartarpur furniture industry in the periphery of Ludhiana, discussed in chapter 18 by Rémi de Bercegol and Shankare Gowda).

For example, India, which recently opened its doors to Foreign Direct Investment, has limited availability of large tracts of lands within large cities. Here, much of the globalisation related investment is occurring in peri-urban areas. This is where megaprojects such as SEZs materialise. Hence, often banal and polluting activities are de-concentrated from the city centre to these peripheral small towns alongside industrial development parks.

Re-localisation: Daily commuters constitute the second component of vibrant small towns around large cities. Their circular migration (i.e., not a permanent movement to the city but periodically going back and forth from a place of residence, which can be for short periods of time, or even daily commuting) towards jobs within the city transforms the small towns bringing in new households, mostly young people, who cannot find affordable housing in the core city. They stimulate a diversification of local economies and alter the local political equilibrium. The youth of small towns, notably those who have access to technical colleges, are also more engaged in commuting. This daily circulation tends to adjust itself as major firms relocate their factories and offices to peripheral parks, thus ensuring that circular migration comes full circle as people from the core city start commuting to the periphery.

What are the conditions of emergence, expansion and adaptation to change of entrepreneurial and innovative towns?

Outside the direct influence of metro cities, there are many vibrant small towns. This is due to a strong and often fast growing network of entrepreneurs and skilled workers who contribute to the development of industrial clusters. They are able to expand their market, adapt to change, and innovate.

Small and medium towns prove to be interesting locations to set up and develop productive activities, particularly in response to the immense demand constituted by the vast majority of Indian families that do not belong to the middle and upper urban class. In these locations, entrepreneurs innovate to create low cost products that respond to the specificities of the non-metropolitan environment with solid and rustic equipment that is easy to operate and repair using local skills. It is an environment of jugaad, by which we mean doing more with less. Such innovative products, notably vehicles adapted to bad roads and difficult weathers, are not just limited to the Indian customer base as some small companies even manage to export to other emerging low cost markets such as Africa (see Chapter 19 by Yann Philippe Tastevin for rig drilling trucks in South India).

Apart from industrial activities, these towns also provide locations for the establishment of technical colleges, which recruit beyond their local geography. Often, some of these towns do not grow in an isolated manner but belong to a group of small towns, co-specialising in a sector. This is also the case for more traditional activities, such as textile or leather industries, that are similarly integrating into the global value chain and up-scaling.

Besides the vibrant small towns, what constitutes the majority of small towns where most of the non-metropolitan urban citizens live?

These are of two broad types, as indicated earlier.

First, ordinary mandi or market towns.  These cater to the needs of the rural areas in their hinterland constitute a large proportion of small towns. Many of these towns have historically been market towns or administrative centres. Depending on their administrative functions (whether they are home to a block office or a police station, etc.), and the dynamism of local agriculture (such as the nature of production and volume of cash crops), they can be more or less dynamic.

Second, emergent census towns. With a decline in farm employment, people have to generate incomes with access to minimal resources. This is how mandi towns as well as large villages, become more diverse.  More of the labour force opens petty shops, becomes daily workers in the construction sector or at brick kilns – either locally or in other towns through seasonal migrations. In turn, their remittances stimulate the morphing of their place of origin.

This morphing, which occurs in villages gives rise to growth in the number of census towns, as the workforce shifts away from non-farm work. In this case, the local economy tends to move away from agricultural activities as in the settlements above. However, here, there is no previous history of urban-like activity such as administration or regional markets. As such, the emergence of these census towns is not supported by the presence of a local elite related to the presence of a market, educational or administrative functions, but markets do emerge.

These emerging urban areas, smaller than the towns referred to above, consolidate and diversify because there is a need for their population to create new activities and access resources through self-employment and mobility. These settlements, therefore, also often serve as local transport hubs assisted by improved rural roads and a growing access to vehicle finance from formal banks.

Is this typology airtight or do some small towns straddle these different ideal-types?

None of the types of small towns described above exists in a pure configuration. Each one is the product of multiple influences carried by an increasingly diverse population, which is often well connected with distant places.

The multiplication of small towns and the urban transformation of villages constitute the material expression of the current socio-economic transition in India that is characterised by important reduction of jobs in the farm sector and poor creation of employment in the industrial sector, associated with a limited level of residential migration towards large cities. Many of these emerging small urban centres are places where people struggle daily to access resources but prefer to stay in a known environment where local values of solidarity support them.

The other pieces in the series can be accessed below:

• ThoughtSpace Episode 20: Social and Economic Transformations in Small Towns of India
• What is happening beyond large cities? Understanding census towns in India
• Understanding Subaltern Urbanisation in India and its Impact  

Watch the full video of the panel discussion on ‘Understanding India’s Energy Transition in Global Context’, organised as part of CPR Dialogues, featuring Michael Grubb, Navroz K Dubash, Radhika Khosla, Ashok Sreenivas, chaired by Ajay Mathur.

India faces three substantial challenges in the coming decades with enormous implications for its future energy demand. First, India has yet to provide clean cooking energy to 800 million people, and electricity access to 200 million people; failure to achieve this will dramatically reduce the human development possibilities for vast numbers of Indians. Second, India has to create jobs at pace with our shifting demography, which cannot happen without more and better power – electricity demand is likely to at least double in the next fifteen years at a time when clean energy is rising up the national and global political agenda. Third, the quality and form of India’s urban transition has enormous implications for energy needs.  Managing these simultaneous pressures poses a severe challenge because India has to transform to the energy sector of the 21st century even as we grapple with 20th century problems of waste, theft and unreliability.

Moreover, India’s energy transition is taking place within a larger global energy context, which will shape available supply options. Globally, the steep fall in price of renewable energy technologies has sparked a conversation about how, not when, economies will transition to a predominantly renewable energy future. However, the transition costs and challenges are potentially substantial and hotly disputed. Moreover, global oil and gas economics and politics have been cast into uncertain territory with the development of shale oil and gas technologies. And not least, the imperative of addressing climate change in the face of ever more dire warnings by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change hangs like a shadow over global energy futures, and in particular puts pressure on an expansion of coal-based energy.

Historically, India has viewed pressures to mitigate climate change, in particular, as a threat to development. And indeed, India’s energy needs remain substantial, and any pressures to absolutely limit energy use or increase the costs of energy will have negative social and economic effects. At the same time, India is grappling with many other challenges that could also be solved by judicious shifts toward energy efficiency and cleaner energy: energy security due to import dependence in oil could be mitigated by renewable powered electric cars; congested cities could be cleared by energy-saving public transport; and air pollution could be mitigated through energy efficiency and renewable energy. The question before India, therefore, is whether India can productively leverage global energy trends through a judicious mix of demand and supply approaches even while meeting its own energy needs? Or do these trends pose a challenge to India as the country expands energy use in service of development?
From one perspective, rapid global change provides an opportunity: India has yet to lock into technologies and institutional paths that were designed for coal, oil and centralized power, and can build an energy and electricity system better suited for the 21st century. From the other, negotiating a complex technology and institutional transition, while dealing with the overhang of 20th century energy problems of low access and weak and inefficient systems, seems only to be a challenge.

This panel explored to what extent India’s energy transition, in the context of a global energy transition, provides opportunities versus throws up challenges, and what India can do to effectively negotiate this transition.

Ajay Mathur is Director General, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI).

Michael Grubb is Professor of Energy & Climate Change, Bartlett School Environment, Energy & Resources, Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London.

Navroz K Dubash is a Professor at CPR.

Radhika Khosla is Research Director, Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development, University of Oxford and Visiting Fellow, CPR.

Ashok Sreenivas is Senior Fellow at Prayas (Energy Group).

The question and answer session that followed can be accessed here.

Key takeaways about the Dialogues by Michael Grubb can be accessed here.

Watch all other sessions of the Dialogues below:

• The International Climate Change Regime: Looking Back to Look Forward 
• Research for Policy Action on Air Pollution, in collaboration with CECFEE
• India’s Technology Transition: The Present and the Possible
• CPR Youth Awards: A Youth-Driven Agenda for Change
• India’s 21st Century Transitions
• The Emerging World Order and India’s Role
• Is the Urban Future Metropolitan? Big Cities in Urban Systems
• Geopolitics and Geo-Economics in a Changing South Asia