life in general: say no to plastic

We are living a plastic life. From what we eat or drink to what we wear we stand engulfed in a vast ocean of plastic material. And, most of it, particularly that used in our eating and drinking habits, is use-once-and-throw. No decent bit of recycling ever happens of of the plastic and thermocol cups, glasses and plates or tin cans we use and throw as if it was our birthright to do so.

In countries such as ours quite a bit of these even get burned as trash to avoid having to transport it to a garbage dump. Anyone bothered that these release highly toxic chemicals in the air? "We are not doing the burning!" is what one might hear from offended people who clearly have lost sight of their mindless consumption habits that have caused it.

Un-burnt plastic items that do find their way to the dump are piling up and even as natural mountains are becoming small due to mining and quarrying activity we see mountains of plastic and other materials to do not decompose for hundreds years.

It is astonishing that so many well-educated consumers, having access to every kind of information on their finger tips (internet, mobile phones, books etc), fail miserably to take steps, at least a few if not all, to bring down the use of plastic in their daily lives.

To give just one example: how much really would it take for high-heeled corporate world officers and professionals to keep a non-plastic glass and a cup on their desks which they use to drink water and tea or coffee? Why do they think they do no wrong in using a new plastic glass or cup every time they want to drink water or tea?

How much difficult is it really for us to re-use plastic bags in the next round of shopping, atleast 3-4 out of every 10 times? Every effort is required today to reduce the pain we are causing our Mother Earth every day of our life.

life in financial markets: 3-year analysis of food prices in india

In order to interpret a relatively longer term trend in food prices that the Indian government uses in its Food Articles Index (a part of Wholesale Price Index) I did a story (in the newspaper I work) early this month.

Here is what I wrote:

Price volatility in some, consistent rise in others

Analysis of 55 food items reveal lesser-known ones registering the highest price increase

Onions have the potential to make government ministers cry in fear if its price keeps shooting up but it is not onion that has led the price rise in food articles over a longer time frame. The Food Articles Index (FAI), which weighs 14.34 per cent in Wholesale Price Index-All Commodities (WPI), rose by 17.39 per cent from its average of weekly prices in 2009 to that in 2010.

With respect to individual food items, out of 55 food items (cereals, pulses, vegetables, fruits, milk, eggs-meat-fish, spices and tea-coffe) that form a part of the FAI, 25 rose more than FAI and onion was not in this list, as per a FCRB analysis. Taking yearly averages, onion's price went up by only 5.25 per cent from 2009 to 2010. But from 2008 to 2009, it was the sixth highest riser at 36.36 per cent. Interestingly, in the year-on-year (YoY) period prior to that, from 2007 to 2008, onion price had fallen by 17.85 per cent.

Such volatility was the norm for many food items -- up in one year, down in next, again up in the following year, or vice versa. For instance, among the five highest gainers and decliners in the last three YoY periods, potato fell by the third-largest quantum of14.32 per cent from 2007 to 2008, shot up by the highest quantum of 70.57 per cent from 2008 to 2009, and fell by the highest quantum of 32.07 per cent from 2009 to 2010 (see table).

Who led food price flare-up?
Even as some food items fluctuate up and down from one year to next, some such as
turmeric rise sharply continuously
Risen the most	Wt. in FAI*	'09 to '10		Fallen the most	Wt. in FAI*	'09 to '10
Turmeric	0.56	125.88		Potato	1.39	-32.07
Garlic	0.42	97.86		Corriander	0.14	-29.80
Cardamom	0.14	88.32		Tea	0.77	-17.55
Guava	0.56	77.31		Masur	0.42	-6.23
Litchi	0.28	74.53		Gram	2.30	-3.01
		'08 to '09				'08 to '09
Potato	1.39	70.57		Guava	0.56	-28.73
Turmeric	0.56	66.06		Corriander	0.14	-22.84
Tapioca	0.49	42.00		Lemon	0.49	-14.59
Moong	0.56	39.26		Brinjal	2.09	-9.21
Arhar	0.98	39.21		Coconut (Fresh)	1.67	-7.10
		'07 to '08				'07 to '08
Corriander	0.14	68.69		Garlic	0.42	-22.73
Ginger (Fresh)	0.35	67.65		Onion	1.26	-17.85
Mango	4.53	37.34		Potato	1.39	-14.32
Tea	0.77	30.15		Urad	0.70	-10.53
Masur	0.42	25.01		Sweet Potato	0.14	-6.37
Figures in per cent
Year-on-year changes are calculated based on yearly averages of weekly prices
* Weight in Food Articles Index
Source: Capitaline Neo, FCRB

But there were a few consistent price gainers among the 55 food items in the three YoY periods. These included such as turmeric, cardamom, litchi, fish, arhar, tapioca, milk, orange, papaya, mutton and okra. The only consistent declining food item was gram that declined in the last two YoY periods and went up by a marginal 0.15 per cent from 2007 to 2008.

But the food items that impacted the FAI the most adversely were the ones that weighed the most in the index and which were shooting up consistently. For instance, the five food items that weigh the most in FAI -- milk (22.59 per cent weightage in FAI), rice (12.48 per cent), wheat (7.81 per cent), fish-marine (5.02 per cent) and mango (4.53 per cent) have all gone up in all the last three YoY periods, barring one instance of mango falling by a small quantum from 2008 to 2009. Milk, for instance, has gone by 6.01 per cent (2007 to 2008), 14.32 per cent (2008 to 2009) and 24.49 per cent (2009 to 2010). In the same three periods, fish-marine has shot up by 9.08 per cent, 8.77 per cent and 40.81 per cent and rice by 12.81 per cent, 13.68 per cent and 7.03 per cent.

life in general: gujarat bjp govt. continues to cover up 2002 genocide-like killings of muslims

The newsreport I share below brings out yet another ugly attempt by the BJP-ruled, Narendra Modi-controlled, state government of Gujarat state to use dirty and illegal means to cover up any expose of the genocide-like killings of Muslims in February and March 2002.

Here is the newsreport:

http://twocircles.net/2010dec31/tv_journalist_rahul_singh_booked_covering_gujarats_mass_grave_digging.htm

TV journalist Rahul Singh booked for covering Gujarat's mass grave digging

31 December 2010

By TCN Special Correspondent,

Ahmedabad: In a sinister move to gag the press in Gujarat of Narendra Modi, the Panchmahals (Godhra) district police have booked TV journalist Rahul Singh as co-accused in a case pertaining to digging of the mass graves at Panderwada, near Godhra, in 2005. The police have got a court summon issued to question Rahul who was working with Sahara TV channel here then.

The police have booked five persons including Rais Khan, a former aide of noted civil rights activist Teesta Setalvad. Setalvad’s Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) have been fighting cases of Muslim victims of 2002 Gujarat riots.

A team of Gujarat police on Wednesday descended at the Bhopal residence of Rahul. A convoy of four police vehicles from Godhra surrounded Rahul's house from all sides, creating panic and terror in the locality.

Police told his family members that they wanted to take Rahul to Gujarat for questioning in the mass grave digging case which he had reported for Sahara Samay. As Rahul was not present at his house, his family members were told to accept the summons and produce Rahul to the police but his father N K Singh, resident editor of the Bhopal edition of The Hindustan Times, declined to receive the summons.

The police left Rahul's house when local and national TV journalists reached the spot and questioned them as to why they had come to Rahul's house.

Rahul had joined Times Now in Bhopal and is currently working with Headlines Today in Delhi.

Though it is not known as to what exactly the police want to extract from Rahul, but police sources say that they want to know from Rahul who had informed him about the digging of the mass grave. So, the police want him to reveal his source, which journalists all over the world hold as the most sacred and never divulge even if they have to go to prison.

As the relatives of 27 Muslims killed during riots in Panderwada were locating their bodies, they came to know that they were buried in a mass grave in the bed of Panam river, near Lunavada, in Panchmahals (Godhra) district.

On December 27, 2005, the victims began digging the river bed and found the skeletons. Some of them informed mediapersons as well as CJP as it was extending legal assistance to riot victims.

While media reported the news of Muslim riot victims buried in a mass grave and discovery of their skeletons, police lodged an FIR against CJP coordinator Rais Khan and those involved in the digging on charges of destroying evidence. Rais Khan was in 2008 expelled by Setalvad as the latter suspected him to be working in collusion with the state government.

But police could not arrest Rais Khan and others as CJP got a bail for them from the Gujarat high court. The high court also stayed further proceedings in the case.

Later on, the Supreme Court issued orders for DNA testing of the skeletons and eight of them were identified.

But after Rais Khan quit company with Setalvad, one of the accused in the case withdrew his petition from the high court. The high court on November 24, 2010, vacated the stay in the case. After this Rais Khan and three others surrendered to the Panchmahals police. During interrogation, Rais Khan is reported to have told that he had helped the riot victims at the instance of Setalvad.

Human rights activists believe that the whole exercise to know who ordered digging of the grave and who informed the media is aimed at implicating Setalvad, who has become a headache for the Modi government by extending full support to the riot victims.

Gujarat-based human rights activists have strongly condemned the police bid to question Rahul, saying it amounted to an attack on freedom of expression.

Noted human rights activist J S Bandukwala said that Rahul and other mediapersons, who reported the mass grave digging, deserved to be felicitated as they had exposed how the police buried those killed in the riots without informing their relatives and kept it a secret. He urged media not to buckle to the Gujarat police and give tough fight to uphold freedom of the press.

life in financial markets & journalism: ratan tata needs to improve himself first

Rata Tata lives in an illusionary world of his own making where twisting and distorting the truth is a daily necessity. Its been many years since I could not but help to realise that this man, like many of his peers in Indian and world industry, does not merit the flattering write-ups by senior editors and journalists in Indian and world media (which, by the way, still continues shamelessly by some newspapers, magazines and television channels despite all the recent exposes as per the conscious decisions of their editor-in-chiefs).

As a journalist, I am amused when I see many media editors harp about integrity in journalism and then go on to practise insidious journalism, executed very cunningly. I have written about this a couple of times in my blog but it needs to be stated again: editor-in-chiefs in a majority of media organisations in India hold large amounts of power without any accountability to any one. Unfortunately, majority of the readers and viewers of Indian media choose not to notice this.

Anwyay, there is a good write-up by a columnist at Outlook magazine's website putting Rata Tata's recent statements to media in an insightful perspective. I share it below.

The Banana Sheiks

The Niira Radia tapes have firmly put the spotlight of adverse attention on politics and the media. But surprisingly, the loudest voice of protest—which is also a claim of innocence and a warning that the focus on the mud-smeared keeps attention off the real beasts in the 2G story—has come from India Inc. Ratan Tata, head of the Tata group and Radia’s foremost client, calls the leaked tapes “unauthorised” and their publication and the subsequent buzz “a smokescreen” for the real scam. He has asked the government to book those guilty in the 2G scam “but stop this banana republic kind of attack”.

For this paragon of propriety, rightly affronted by the breach of privacy, the whistle-blowing that brought the tapes into the open is symptomatic of a “banana republic”—never mind that it exposes the nexus between business, bureaucracy and the media. He has even enlightened us, in the course of a television interview, on what happens in banana republics: “Banana republics are run on cronyism. People of great power wield great power. People with less power, or those who are not in power, go to jail without adequate evidence or their bodies are found in the trunks of cars.” Sounds like one of the many cautionary notes wise men pronounce regarding the conditions the country could slide into if the rule of law is not upheld. But listen to those words, coming from a powerful industrialist, from the perspective of a whistle-blower, presumably someone with “less power”, and you would be forgiven for reading a threat between those lines.

Something good may come of it, after all, for the great man has helped us with the diagnosis by telling us how banana republics work—through cronyism, which has been on ample display in those very tapes he despises, though the more precise term for what the tapes reveal would be crony capitalism. What the cag report on 2G and the tapes reveal is the sale of spectrum at throwaway prices, changes in eligibility and procedural criteria to favour a few chosen ones, windfall gains through sale of equity and resale of spectrum, cartelisation through cross-holdings in supposedly rival companies, and lobbying for the appointment of a minister whose decisions made all that possible. They also hint at money-laundering, bribery and manipulation of policy, administration, the media and even the judiciary in matters like aviation and the quarrel over natural gas between the Ambani brothers. The primary driver in all this is capital: it is corporate houses that employ lobbyists to cozy up to politicians, bureaucrats and the media; it is corporate houses that cultivate and invest in these groups in order to corner windfalls. Corporate houses, therefore, cannot claim victimhood in a kleptocracy of their creation.

The diagnosis is for the UPA-2 government, professed champion of inclusive growth and the aam aadmi, to understand and act upon. For it’s crony capitalism that has driven the miracle growth rate of close to nine per cent. Rajeev Chandrashekhar, a Rajya Sabha MP and former FICCI president, has pointed out that agriculture has grown at a dismal one per cent and manufacturing at no more than three per cent. The so-called miracle has been achieved through phenomenal growth in mining, real estate, construction. Recent scams—Adarsh, CWG, the Bellary brothers’ many depredations, Yediyurappa’s land largesses to relatives, and not the least, the 2G scam itself—are strong enough indications of the profitable webs big business casts.

The public revulsion these scams have evoked should be a wake-up call. Pointing to bigger stains on the clothes of the opposition will not be enough to save this dispensation. Governments that were complacent about corruption were overthrown despite a decimated and vanquished opposition in the wake of the Jayaprakash Narayan movement in the 1970s and the Bofors disclosures in the late 1980s. The scale of robbery this time has been revealed to be so high, its execution so systematic, that it will take much more than window-dressing to save the government—and much more important—the poor who live in hope.

When the licence-permit raj was disbanded, ushering in liberalisation and globalisation and the promise of plenty, it was said cronyism would come to an end: anyone with initiative could compete on a level playing field. How mythical this is the robber barons of big capital have just driven home to us. The real smokescreen—one Ratan Tata is unlikely to warn against—is the neo-liberal rhetoric that shields crony capitalism and allows it to stealthily profit by influencing policy and leave India’s poor with empty bowls.

life in general: (part 1) 'unheard voices..' book written by harsh mander

There is one book that is very dear to me. It is Harsh Mander's 'Unheard Voices: Stories of Forgotten Lives' written by him some years back.

I share below excerpts from the book. It is one of the 20-odd stories of common Indian people that Mander has written about in the book.

Excerpts from the book:

Two decades after he was uprooted from the land of his ancestors, Nanhe Ram, still speaks little. Looking much older than his sixty years, he sits for long hours outside his dilapidated hut in the resettlement village of Aitma. He has no land, no cattle, no sons; his ageing wife labours all day in the forests or in the fields of the big farmers of the village, to keep the fires burning.

There is anguish but little recrimination, as he talks haltingly of the past. The first time they heard about the large dam that would submerge their village, he recalls, was when daily wages were twelve annas (which would probably be in the mid-1950s). Their village, as, indeed, the entire region, was hardly connected to the outside world, and until then they had encountered very few government officials. When men on bicycles, wearing trousers and shirts, rode into their villages to inform them about the dam, the tribal people living there had got scared and run away into the forests.

He did not know then that a gigantic thermal power complex was being planned in the neighbourhood of his village, at Korba, for which the two rivers that flowed there, the Hasdeo and Bango, were to be dammed. Fifty-nine tribal villages like his were to be submerged, twenty completely and the rest partially, along with 102 square kilometres of dense sal forest, to create a vast new reservoir of 213 square kilometres. No one consulted with the 2,721 families of these villages, condemned to become internal refugees in the cause of ‘national development’, profoundly and irrevocably. Some 2,318 of these families, who like Nanhe Ram were the least equipped because of their temperament, culture and lack of experience, to negotiate their new lives.

The survey work continued for six or seven years, and it was in 1961 that the first phase of the project, for the construction of the barrage and major canal was sanctioned. Nanhe recalls their fear and excitement when a small plane flew in as part of the on-going survey work. However, it was only a decade and a half later, in 1977, that the first settlement, Nanhe’s village, was actually submerged. In the intervening years, construction continued apace, but no one from the government planned any steps for their rehabilitation or even as much as spoke with them about how they might rebuild their lives in the future. They were completely ignored.

In 1977, a few months before their homes were actually submerged, the farmers were packed into a truck and driven to the divisional headquarters of Bilaspur, located in the heart of the Chhatisgarh region of Madhya Pradesh. Nanhe recalls that they arrived at the imposing building housing the district office in the late afternoon, and were bundled into a courtyard. There they were addressed by an official, who informed them that their village would be lost to the dam reservoir in just a few months, during the net monsoon, and that the government was therefore paying them the first installment of their compensation. For Nanhe, this was a niggardly Rs 540.

When their truck returned to their village, it was morning. The inhabitants found that the local revenue officer, the tehsildar, was waiting for them. The tehsildar wanted to recover the land revenue due from Nanhe out of this compensation amount. Nanhe lost Rs 300 to him, and the remaining Rs 240 also disappeared before long merely in day-to-day survival.

During the meeting at the district office, someone had timidly asked, But where are we to go when our village goes under in the next monsoon? The official had replied tersely, How do I know? Why don’t you go to your relatives’ homes? But, some weeks later, a bank of activists held a series of meetings in their village. How can they ask you to go to the homes of your relatives, they thundered. Did your relatives build this dam? They organized demonstrations and rallies, in which many young tribals of the village also participated. Nanhe was confused and frightened, and he held himself aloof. Eventually, the government conceded that the tribal families that were being submerged would be given house-sites in a resettlement colony located in the forest uplands.

In the few months that remained, Nanhe made plans in his own way for the future. Where and how they would live, he did not know. He was worried first about his cow, whom they all loved. He knew that he would not be able to take care of her in the resettlement village, at a time when even keeping his wife and two daughters alive would be very hard. He also could not think of selling her, because she was like a member of the family. So he gave her to an Ahir cowherd, and promised to pay him Rs 150 each year for looking after her. Nanhe continued, despite all his subsequent tribulations, to save and send money for the upkeep of the cow for ten years, until the cow died.

Just a day before the monsoon broke, the trucks arrived. The people were given only a few hours to bundle their belongings into the trucks. They were then driven to the resettlement village, in which house plots of .05 acres each had been hurriedly cleared for them in the forest. The rains broke early, and Nanhe and his family spent the entire monsoon huddled with their few belongings under a mahua tree. In the dry spells, Nanhe struggled, trying to build a small hut, while his wife scoured the forests for food.

The remaining instalments of compensation were paid only fifteen years later, in 1992. Nanhe received a cheque of Rs 2,000, which he used to repay loans to the moneylender. Nanhe survived on occasional wage labour, but only barely. It was around then that for the first time, under pressure from activists, the government initiated a few livelihood programmes. Although the government has since spent some two crore rupeeds in the resettlement region in recent years to belatedly provide livelihoods to the displaced families, there has been little success. Fishing in the new reservoir is dominated by outside contractors. Forty lakh rupees were spent on a poultry farm, which ran for a few months, with twelve beneficiaries who were given 100 birds each. The birds suddenly died of some illness, and the farm closed down. The manager of the poultry farm departed after making a young tribal girl pregnant. Ambar charkhas or spinning looms were installed, but raw material supply and marketing were erratic. The looms provided wages in fits and starts, and that too only one rupee a day.

The resettlement villages are at the periphery of the large artificial reservoir, connected by earth roads that get submerged after the rains each year. In these inaccessible, remote, artificial settlements, not only are jobs hard to come by but life is very hard in other ways as well. Schools, health centres, credit cooperatives and ration shops rarely function. If someone is seriously ill during the rainy months, the only way to reach a hospital is by undertaking a perilous journey of three hours on a small leaking dinghy.

Not surprisingly, of the 208 families that had been resettled in Aitma, only sixty remain. The rest have migrated, either to the forests as encroachers, or to the city slums, in desperate search of means for bare survival.

Nanhe is among the few who remain, because he had neither the strength, nor the will to struggle and to start life anew one more time. He sits quietly outside his hut for most of the day. But sometimes when he speaks, he says softly to anyone who is willing to hear. When I am on a boat, in the middle of the reservoir, and I know that hundreds of feet beneath me, at that very point, lie my village and my home and my fields, all of which are lost forever, it is then that my chest rips apart, and I cannot bear the pain…

life in journalism: a welcome torchlight on unhealthy aspects of Indian journalism

Every once in a while the ugly facets of Indian media editors come out in the open. Last week, Outlook magazine published the tapes between Nira Radia and a few media editors and journalists. Everything about the issue and the tapes can be on Outlook's website here, here, here, here, here and here.

Nira Radia and her firms including Vaishanvi handle the public relations of all the companies of the Tata Group (whose chairman is Rata Tata) and the Reliance Industries Group (whose chairman is Mukesh Ambani).

Its good that the Radia tapes have been published by Outlook magazine. Such a torchlight was necessary, and I am sure other dirty aspects of Indian journalism would also not remain un-hidden forever.

The editors who feature in these tapes are not the only ones who subtly plugged Radia's clients in their publications and television channels or to political parties using their influence. There are a few other media editors too who do the plugging in their publications/channels but do so in a very cunning manner. I have no doubt that over time these editors would receive payback for their un-ethical and dangerous liaisons with large companies and their PR representatives.

I have written about the unhealthy practises in journalism in my blog a few times. In one of my blog post (29 September 2008 one) I even mentioned Vaishnavi company (owned and run by Radia) by name. I share below the contents of that blog post:

http://natant.blogspot.com/2008/09/life-in-journalism-public-relations.html

There is a slyness with which India Inc and their pubic relations (PR) companies treat the media. Partly, of course, it is the media's self-imposed cowardliness but it also due to the sophistication that the public relations companies (or in some cased the companies do it directly without hiring a public relations firm) deploy to discourage/intimidate/fool the editors and journalists that dare to ask even basic tough questions about their client-companies.
As a journalist, I have seen how some PR companies directly deal with the Editor-in-chief (or other senior editors) of a publication or a news channel and try to manipulate them if they perceive a junior-level editor/reporter probing the affairs of their clients a little deeper (such a journalist, in my view, would only be carrying out his/her journalistic duties more diligently).
The PR companies that try to aggressively wield a lot of influence on the top media editors include Genesis Burson-Marsteller, Vaishnavi PR, Perfect Relations and 2-3 more.
The media dare not even write about their PR companies as a part of the regular coverage of the role of all kinds of business entities in the economy and industry. But in June this year Tehelka magazine dared and wrote a story on them (you can read it here). It was a welcome torchlight on an evasive bunch of people although I still felt the story was soft.
There is a lot more to say about the techniques used by the PR companies that would do a Goebbels proud. The readers/viewers of Indian media do not adequately know the kind of insights/news/analysis they are missing out on due to such Goebbels'.

life in financial markets: fuels on fire

Recently, I wrote an editorial for the publication I work for on the issue of diesel-run SUVs and cars. 

Here is what I wrote:

Fuels on fire

The car market in our country has been on a roll in recent years notwithstanding the intervening global depression period of 2008 and early 2009. While car manufacturers--Indian or foreign--selling cars, including SUVs (sports utility vehicles) to Indians have all the reason to be mightily pleased with such a trend there is an underlying unpleasant side-effect that India as an ecological landscape is experiencing. 

In the last few years, almost all the high-end cars sold in India have been diesel. These cars, that includes sedans and SUVs, have costed upwards of Rs 7-8 lakh. Advocates for a less-polluted environment have always opposed the dieselisation of the car fleet. They have associated the deteroriating air quality in the cities to the sharply rising levels of tiny particulates of size less than 2.5 microns and nitrogen oxides, both of which arise more out of diesel exhaust emissions than from petrol vehicles. 

So nothing new was being said by union environment minister, Jairam Ramesh when he told the delegates of a UN conference on environment last week that in view of the growing carbon emission levels of India's transportation sector it was criminal for diesel subsidies to be used up in increasing part by large-sized cars and SUVs. It is estimated that these passenger vehicles gobble up 20 to 25 per cent of all diesel sold in the country. 

As a concept, discouraging the use of diesel passenger cars is ideal for climate change mitigation purpose but there are practical difficulties. Particularly if the solution being touted is differential pricing of diesel -- higher for cars and normal rates for trucks, tractors, power generators, agricultural pumps, railway trains and industrial use. Enforcing differential diesel prices at the retail outlet would be extremely difficult. 

One viable alternative was spelled out by a section of a February 2010 report of a government-nominated expert group on a viable and sustainable system of pricing of petroleum products headed by Kirit Parikh. After commenting that there was no economic reason to subsidise diesel car and SUV owners it laid out a formula to collect the same level of tax that petrol car users pay from those who use a diesel vehicle for passenger transport. 

Illustrating through an example and use of discounted rate over a 10-year life of a vehicle, the group stated that a petrol car owner who drove 8000 km a year and got an average mileage of 13.5 km per litre was paying Rs 10,000 more excise duty per year than what he would if he drove a diesel car. The calculation culminated in a figure of Rs 80,000 additional excise duty diesel cars should be required to pay. While this figure may seem low to some, the assumptions of car usage, mileage and discount rate can always be updated and fine tuned to levels that truly reflect the average of the use of passenger cars in the country. 

Whatever be the challenges in finding a solution to the dieselisation of the car industry in India, one has to be found and soon. Even in the US, where governments and consumers are wary of paying more for fuel-efficient vehicles there is heightened awareness of harmful effects of fuel-guzzling SUVs. India is racing ahead on the way to become a consumerist society but it does not have the knowledge and the maturity to deal with the negative environmental side effects. 

Whether unwitting or not, the subsidy being enjoyed by rich diesel car and SUV owners is neither wise nor sustainable.

life in general & financial markets: (part 2) india's obsession with diesel cars

In my July 28 '10 post I had written about the ugly obsession of India's affluent car & SUV owners, automobile manufacturers and government policy makers with the use of diesel.

I share below the latest editorial written by Centre for Science and Environment on diesel cars and SUVs that throws additional light on the matter.

Here goes:

Press Release
CSE supports JairamRamesh on restraints on SUVs and dieselisation of personal cars

New Delhi, November 13, 2010: Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) commends minister of state for environment Jairam Ramesh for slamming the expanding fleet of SUVs and the rampant use of cheap and toxic diesel in personal cars putting public health at risk.

Says Anumita Roychoudhury, head of CSE’s air pollution and urban mobility team, “CSE has been campaigning against these fuel-guzzling polluters for many years, and we fully support Mr Ramesh’s views as reported in national media. While the expanding SUV fleet with large engines undermine the fuel savings in the transport sector, the plume of emissions from India’s diesel cars make the urban air more toxic.”

Reign in the big bully and the guzzler
• Big cars and SUVs are a threat to energy security, climate and public health: CSE is concerned that the Indian market, so far dominated by small cars, is steadily shifting towards the mid to large car segments. This segment already represents about 36 per cent of the total car sales in India. This trend is supported by on-road surveys carried out by RITES and the Delhi Transport Department that show that nearly 30 per cent of the cars on Delhi’s roads are already mid-size and large cars. With large cars that are much less fuel-efficient than smaller cars, the total fleet’s fuel economy will worsen.
• The costs of bigger vehicles can be enormous: This is evident from global studies such as that of the International Council on Clean transportation that show fuel economy of a car fleet declines for a given increase in large vehicle market. A 10 per cent increase in large vehicle sales can roughly result in 2 per cent deterioration in fleet fuel economy. This means roughly, an additional 17,500 barrels of oil will be consumed annually by those 10 per cent large vehicle sales. Why should the Indian government let the country and the climate bear this unacceptable cost on account of luxury consumption, asks Roychoudhury.
• Cost to the consumer: Consumers actually end up spending more on fuel during the life time of large cars. Moreover, considerable numbers of large cars are run mainly on diesel, which undermines air quality. SUVs particularly are captive users of diesel. This defeats the government’s objective of improving vehicle fuel economy to protect India’s energy security and meet its climate goals. Dirty air increases the medical bills of the consumer.
• Use of cheap diesel in big cars and SUVs leads to more oil guzzling in the rebound: Studies in Europe have shown how use of cheaper diesel used in bigger vehicles and SUVs that are also used for long distance driving undermines the efficiency gains of improved vehicle technology. The actual fuel consumption goes up. Other governments are increasing taxes on bigger cars, especially SUVs – most exemplary is the case of China – to minimise the energy and pollution impacts of these vehicles.

Diesel: the toxic trap
The current official policies are encouraging massive dieselisation of the car fleet when ‘clean’ diesel (with 10 ppm of sulphur used with advanced after-treatment systems) is not available in the country. The market share of diesel cars is already over 30 per cent of new sales and is expected to be 50 per cent of new car sales soon.

CSE challenges the industry folklore that the current Bharat Stage III and IV diesel car fleet meets public health benchmark:
• Bharat Stage III and IV emissions standards legally allow diesel cars to emit several times more NOx and PM than petrol cars. Auto industry claims that they are adopting common rail injection systems for diesel cars and therefore they are clean. But our emissions standards are not fuel neutral as they differentiate between petrol and diesel vehicles. The difference is evident in the emissions factors developed by the Automotive Research Association of India for Bharat Stage III diesel cars that are sold across the country. These diesel cars emit 7.5 times more toxic particulate matter than comparable petrol cars (see graphs on our website). This means, one diesel car is equal to adding 7.5 petrol cars to the car fleet in terms of PM emissions and three petrol cars in terms of NOx emissions. Total air toxics from a diesel car that are very harmful and carcinogenic are seven times higher than that from petrol cars.

• Diesel and petrol cars meeting the same level of emission norms have different toxicity levels that determine the cancer causing potential. Data from Europe shows that the diesel cars’ toxicity becomes comparable with petrol only when they are fuelled with near zero sulphur fuel and are fitted with particulate traps. The International Agency for Research of Cancer (IARC), WHO, United States Environmental Protection Agency, etc have all classified diesel emissions as carcinogenic. The European Commission has calculated the difference in lifetime pollution costs of Euro IV-compliant diesel car and petrol car -- and it shows a major difference. The total pollution cost of a Euro IV diesel car is 1,195 Euros vis a vis 846 Euros for a petrol car. This nullifies the marginal greenhouse gas reduction benefits of diesel car and costs higher to the society.

• Government is shouldering the burden of subsidy to the rich car owners: CSE had warned earlier that as the Union government earns much less from excise on a litre of diesel used by cars, as opposed to petrol; revenue losses per litre of diesel will be compounded with increase in diesel car sales. But diesel car owners recover their premium within a few years, given lower diesel prices. This perverse subsidy to the rich comes at an enormous cost to public health. In countries like Brazil, diesel cars are actively discouraged because of the policy to keep taxes lower on diesel. In Denmark, diesel cars are taxed higher to offset the lower prices of diesel fuel. In China, taxes do not differentiate between petrol and diesel.

• Even low carbon emissions and greater fuel efficiency advantages of diesel cars are shrouded in doubt. Diesel cars are popular for their greater fuel efficiency and lower heat-trapping carbon emissions. ARAI data shows Euro III Indian diesel cars emit 1.2 times less carbon dioxide compared to their petrol counterparts. But even this benefit is at risk of being negated as diesel fuel has more carbon content than petrol. If more diesel fuel is burnt, as is likely given its cheaper prices and rising number of cars and SUVs, the heat-trapping carbon emissions will increase. Moreover, even the carbon soot from diesel vehicles are now implicated for global warming.

• Diesel-related emissions are already very high in the air of Delhi and other cities. It is significant that the environment minister has raised the concern over use of cheap diesel in big cars and SUVs now when the air quality data from the Central Pollution Control Board shows that the average levels of tiny particulates, smaller than 2.5-micron size (PM2.5), that go deep inside lungs, have hit a dizzying height in Delhi. The WHO has said that there is no safe level for PM. Studies in the US show that even at very low concentrations and with an increase of only 10 microgram per cubic metre, PM2.5 is associated with significant increases in health risks like asthma, lung diseases, chronic bronchitis and heart damage. Long-term exposure can cause lung cancer. What’s worse, in Delhi, levels of nitrogen dioxides (NO2) are also spiraling adding to the problem of ozone. Both PM and NOx dominate diesel exhaust emissions.

It is time to act.
It is a myth that the diesel car technology that is available currently in India is clean and meets the public health objective. Immediate policy intervention is needed.

CSE proposes the following action plan:
• Discourage big cars and SUVs by linking taxation to the actual fuel consumption of the vehicles. More fuel a vehicle consumes, the more tax should it pay.
• Remove price incentive for diesel cars. Either equalise fuel taxes and prices or impose effectively high additional taxes on diesel cars to neutralize the current fuel price advantage that the cars enjoy.
• Introduce ‘clean’ diesel technology that runs on diesel fuel with sulphur content less than 10 ppm and is fitted with advanced emissions control devices like particulate traps. Otherwise, get off the diesel route.
• Fuel economy standards must not worsen the trade-off between fuel efficiency of diesel cars and their toxic emissions. Fuel economy standards currently in the making must have built-in safeguards against dieselization of car fleet.

life in general: A dream comes true!

 A dream comes true!

life in financial markets: credit information bureaus should be accesible to borrowers too

Five months back, I wrote an editorial for the publication I work for on the issue of credit information bureaus in India and the latest developments with regard to them. I share it below.

By default

Credit information bureaus in the country can not only serve lenders better but also focus on empowering borrowers

You borrow first. Later you pay interest at regular intervals and sooner or later repay the principal. If you do not, you are declared a defaulter. Simple? Not exactly. The reasons behind your defaulting on your loan are as much important as the fact that you have defaulted on your interest or principal payments. But the credit information bureaus in the country are creating credit histories of borrowers based on a simplistic definition of defaults.

It is this rigidity that has now come back to haunt banks. The economic downturn in 2008 and early 2009, combined with poor credit assessment by banks and reckless spending behaviour by individuals has resulted in sharp rise of defaults in credit cards and personal loans.

No wonder then that currently banks' retail loans officers are coming across rising numbers of borrowers with low credit worthiness. They are finding it difficult to sift the chaff from the wheat so to speak. Unable to get behind the nature of defaults they are struggling to make sense of who is a genuine credit risk and who is not.

This is a sorry state of affairs after about seven years of a credit bureau system in the country involving collation and dissemination of credit histories of borrowers. The Credit Information Bureau (India), the first and the largest bureau in the country, has done a good job so far in connecting with lending banks and non-banking financial companies and collecting credit information of borrowers on a frequent basis, and making it available to other lenders. In November 2007, it even introduced the country's first generic credit scoring system in collaboration with TransUnion. For the first time a lending bank or company could get from Cibil a borrower's credit score that predicted his or her likelihood of becoming a defaulter in more than 91 days on credit lines such as credit cards, personal loans, home loans and auto loans.

Missing is the assignment of reasons to credit defaults. How many is not clear but there are cases which lending banks have considered as defaults but which are disputed by the borrowers. The Banking Ombudsman of the Reserve Bank of India is flooded with complaints from bank customers on wrongfully charged credit card dues. Could this be just the tip of the iceberg? There could very well many more cases that never reach the Ombudsman.

With Cibil now, albeit belatedly, working to identify disputed claims in credit histories, lending banks will be able to gauge the intensity of a borrower's default-related problems. But this may not be enough. The credit information system can be geared to service the requirements of not just the lenders but the borrowers as well. For instance, how many individual borrowers in the country have been adequately informed by the banks and NBFCs that they can access their credit report from Cibil? Even if some are aware, the problem of getting one's hands on one's own credit report is cumbersome. A demand draft of Rs 142 has to be made in favour of Cibil and physically mailed to Cibil's Mumbai address along with self-attested copies of address proof and identity proof documents. The credit report is then mailed to the individual's address.

In this day and age of internet-based financial transactions, it is a marvel that individuals are not offered the option to pay Rs 142 via Cibil's website and receive their credit reports by email. There are other missing elements too. Borrowers with good credit scores should get loans at a cheaper interest rate than others. There should be a transparent system that is visible to the borrowers, and not just the lenders, and which can empower the borrowers to seek better terms for themselves. Better still if banks themselves take a lead and advertise openly that they will charge, say 0.50 per cent, lower on a personal loan or a credit card if the borrower or card user has a credit score of a pre-specified higher level and above.

The time is ripe for credit information system to empower the borrowers.