IS INDIA PROGRESSING OR REGRESSING ?

Day in and day out Indian government reels out statistical data on the growth of GDP, per capita income and the consumption of steel, cement, electricity etc., the various parameters of growth of a country. This data brings about the rosy side of government efforts. Some people in the country are satisfied with this pace of growth whereas to a vast majority these are only some numbers and has not made any material difference to their quality of life and the path to poverty alleviation.

The two important parameters, namely the reservations and subsidies are sharp pointers to the failure of India's planning policy.

• Reservations and Quotas: In 1950, the country started with the  reservation policy wherein schedule castes and schedule tribes were given a reservation of 15 % and 7% respectively on the basis of social and economic status. After sixty years, instead of these quotas coming down, the country has reservations to the tune of 50% and some places even much more by additions from newer classes. In fact more population groups are clamoring for additional quotas for themselves. Either the number of people that falls in the quota criterion has risen or it is the boon of vote bank politics. Whatever may be the fact, the answer to ' Is India progressing or regressing ' is clear to any unbiased citizen of the country.
• Subsidies: If India were progressing the number of people in need of subsidies for food, fuel as also the amount spent on doling out these subsidies should have come down whereas the reality is just the converse of this.

India certainly is on road to become an industrialized nation but sadly the fruits of this industrialization  do not seem to trickle down to its poor millions. This raises a very serious question. Is India's planning on the right path? Is this growth rate sufficient to alleviate poverty in a reasonable time frame, say two or three decades? Or India will grow into an industrialized giant/behemoth wherein a big percentage has to be content with poverty and live below subsistence level existence as had happened in the developed world during the early stages of industrial revolution. It is time the polity and planners brood over this concern and come out with solutions that will bring the graphs of reservations and subsidies sloping downwards at the earliest.

WHY THRUST TOWARDS RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES IS LANGUISHING

This is what Thomas Alva Edison, the inventor who gave this world electricity and electric bulb thought about the potential of solar, wind and tidal energy way back in 1931. Simultaneously he had a premonition that the human race would commit the folly of waiting for the drying up of all our fossil fuel resources before tackling the scientific and technological problems associated with harnessing of renewable energy.
There are others like George Porter, Ralph Nader and Joseph A. Tainter who gave their own assessment for this delay and how right they have been.


I have no doubt that we will be successful in harnessing the sun’s energy… If sunbeams were weapons of war, we would have had solar energy centuries ago.
George Porter, an English chemist (1973).

The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun.~ Ralph Nader, an American consumer activist and politician (1980).

Any change from the long established practices and technologies are resisted by cartels of nations,industries and even the technocrat lobbies for reasons of self interest and fear of losing on their monopolies and importance. This is why the nuclear nations are strongly touting for nuclear energy in spite of the universally known fact that a nuclear power plant is a ticking catastrophic bomb and has massive problems associated with disposal of wastes, dismantling of old plants, danger of nuclear fuels passing into the hands of terrorists and what not. Joseph A. Tainter, an American anthropologist has very aptly summed this in the following lines.

…a voluntary change to solar energy and green fuels, energy-conserving technologies, and less overall consumption… is a utopian alternative that… will come about only if severe, prolonged hardship in industrial nations makes it attractive, and if economic growth and consumerism can be removed from the realm of ideology.

The two main problems i.e. the requirement of large tracts of land and energy storage when renewable energy sources are to be employed are just excuses by vested interests to avoid them for the time being. 

“Opportunities to install renewable energy systems on vacant properties can be found in every community,” said Jared Blumenfeld, EPA’s Regional Administrator for the Pacific Southwest. “Tapping sun and wind power at brownfield sites, rooftops, parking lots, and abandoned land could provide untapped gigawatts of clean energy.”

Similarly, the requirement and problem of energy storage is not as big as is being made out. First of all, about 50% of power requirements are during day time, similarly large quantities are required in stand alone applications, mini and micro grids. All solutions lie in combining and hybridization of technologies. In fact the developed world is guilty of telling us how renewables cannot be used for providing energy security to  this world  instead of how they can be used. Where there is a will, there is a way.The day politicians, scientists and technologists set their sights on these inexhaustible sources, nothing else will be required for energy security.

INDIA CALLING OR CRYING: REFORMS: CABINET COMMITTEE ON INVESTMENTS AND LAND...

INDIA CALLING OR CRYING: REFORMS: CABINET COMMITTEE ON INVESTMENTS AND LAND...: Cabinet committee of Government of India cleared two much hyped reforms, namely the formation of cabinet committee on investments chaired ...

AADHAR BASED PAYMENTS ARE A BIG STEP FORWARD

Unique identification number (UID) or the Aadhar based cash transfers will take effect from January 2013 in 51 districts of India. This initiative is ultimately going to be a game changer in the fighting corruption particularly the petty one. This corruption involves payments of  National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) wages, scholarship and pensions to non existing individuals, leakages and pilferage of subsidized food articles, kerosene and LPG gas to non existing persons. Though petty in nature, the impact of this corruption on the economy is huge as the loss amounts to something like 25000 to 30000 crores of rupees. Similar amounts gets wasted as a result of wrong classification of poor, wrong allocation of NREGA work, maintaining musters, identifying beneficiaries for scholarships and pensions etc. India aims at covering 600 million people under Aadhar by 2015. for such payments and that will be a day of reckoning for no legal beneficiary will have to dole out cuts to any person.
Aadhar is the only viable solution to the malaise of black money and corruption . The day India is in a position to link all asset forms to an Aadhar card, a new prosperous and powerful India will start emerging.

FDI In MULTIBRAND RETAIL

The Indian parliament is engaged in a hot debate on whether India should go ahead with FDI in multibrand retail or not. Various classes of people namely the Indian retail community including small retailers ( Kirana stores ), farmers, employees of Indian retailers, multi layered middlemen system and finally the consumer. Every body's aspirations are to have a prosperous and better life. This means interests of every class clashes with that of the other. Farmer will like to have maximum value of their produce, consumer will like to have maximum value for its money, workers whether in the farming sector or small retail will love to have better wages and better working environment or in other words will love to be part of organised sector and the middle men will will like to earn maximum through commission trade. It is in this confusing scenario that the country has to seek a solution for the betterment of its masses.

It is a basic fact that every individual whether belonging to rich, middle or poor class, whether from the farming community, working class, retailer community is a consumer and any means/ any policy measure that can help in lowering down the price to the consumer and simultaneously giving better remuneration to the farmer has to be welcomed. Any measure that moves the work force to organised sector from unorganised sector with better working conditions, amenities and basic perks like insurance and medical facilities has to be welcomed and not decried. If the scale of operations can help in manufacturing activity and reduce the cost to consumer in fields like automobile, telephone etc. without harming the small sector and in fact giving a big boost to all ancilliary industry and small scale industry.

In the light of this, the country must make use of benefits of scale of operation which is the only way forward to improve the standard of its masses and FDI in multibrand retail is one such measure that will go a long way in mitigating the plight of Indian masses with enormous high grade employment opportunities at all levels at the front as well as back end. Not going ahead with such an opportunity will be a retrograde step and an opportunity missed to improve upon the plight of India's poor masses.

ENERGY SECURITY THROUGH NUCLEAR POWER : A BANE OR A BOON FOR HUMANITY

The story of  immense energy locked up in an atom and its release during fission and fusion processes is about seventy year old and has been a talk of thinkers, philosophers, scientists and leaders for use in  military, energy and medicine fields. In the early second half of the last century, we were given to understand that the catastrophic effects were associated only with the military application of nuclear bombs and if we allowed science to develop as a good servant instead of its being the master, nuclear sciences could well be the game changer for humanity for all times to come. Slowly the overall deleterious concerns of playing with the nuclear sciences came to light. The concept of energy security through nuclear power emerged as a bane  rather than a boon to the humanity. The rhetoric of a few world leaders, a few powerful lobbies and  industrial cartels with vested interests and ulterior motives not withstanding. "I do not know with what weapons the third world war will be fought but the fourth world war will definitely be fought with bows and arrows" These ominous words from none other than A. Einstein, the man behind the concept of nuclear energy, though said in the context of an atom bomb hold equally well for mankind's efforts to utilise this energy for peaceful uses, the much touted nuclear power. We have to understand that controlling such an enormous energy giving reaction with our limited knowledge of nuclear physics, mechanical sciences, material sciences, causes of accidents along with the uncertainties of nature and allied phenomena  with 100% surety is nothing but a mirage. It will only be prudent on the part of mankind not to sit on thousands of these ticking catastrophic bombs of self annihilation just for the sake of energy security and that too for the coming few decades ( In the light of limited availability of nuclear fuels ), particularly when our planet has been bestowed with eternal and absolutely safe energy sources like sun and wind. If we are destined to fall back upon the use of renewable energy sources for all our energy needs after six or seven decades, is it not worthwhile to do it right now and be done away with the risk of destruction of mankind.

NUCLEAR FUELS ARE A CURSE ON HUMANITY

Today Energy security is the topmost priority requirement of the mankind and how to achieve this is the hottest topic of debate in all countries on our globe. While everybody seems to agree  to the idea of having clean energy so that global warming is controlled as a first step and subsequently reversed, a fierce battle is going on about the route to be adopted for this clean energy. The candidates for clean energy are nuclear, and renewable energy sources like hydro, solar, wind, ocean, geothermal etc. etc.. The major criterion for  any clean energy are 

• Involvement of clean and safe processes for making available energy source at the power plant
• Power producing  process to be safe, least accident prone and incapable of being catastrophic under any conditions
• Wastes and by products resulting from the process should also be safe and clean

It does not require rocket science to understand that all renewable energy sources measure themselves adorably when subjected to the rigours of all criterion postulates mentioned above but can we say the same about nuclear energy. The answer is a big emphatic no to all the three criterion.

Let us now examine the story of energy from nuclear power plants rigorously.

• Nuclear fuel mining: The troubles start right from the stage of the mining of uranium ores to their crushing, leaching to make what is known as natural Uranium. The miners are subjected to toxic effects and the mines are left with toxicity on the surface which otherwise was lying dormant deep under the surface of earth.Uranium mining is a very inefficient process and generates vast amounts of toxic waste.In fact uranium mine tailings leave vast amounts of toxicity.
• Fuel enrichment: Natural Uranium is about 99.27% of U-238 and 0.72% of U-235, the fissile isotope which is used for nuclear reactors of power plants and nuclear weapons. What is left behind is called depleted uranium ( DU ) containing about 0.2 to 0.4% U-235 and the balance U-238. DU has a density of 19.1 g/cc and is used for defensive armour and armour piercing projectiles as also the so called Dirty Bombs. DU contamination occurs when these products are employed during a war and produces lingering toxic effects on humans and land area.
• Nuclear power production: Apart from the ever imminent lurking danger  of  a catastrophic  accident, as probability theory cannot be relied upon for assessing the safety of a nuclear power plant in the light of big chunks of deficiencies in our knowledge of nuclear physics, mechanical sciences, material manufacture and subsequent behaviour in different conditions and the vagaries and severity of natural calamities and disasters. Also we have to understand that technology can never be a guarantee to safety.
• Wastes and by products: The spent fuel and its disposal are the biggest cause of concern for the humanity and even though the world has been producing nuclear power for well over fifty years, no viable solution has been found. Solutions to the problem of managing Nuclear waste and its safe custody are the topics that are bothering the strongest exponents of nuclear power for the costs involved and effectiveness of these solutions.