Instead of seeking help from elected representatives, it would be ideal to come up with a solution to India’s water crisis by allowing professionals to tackle the threat.

A popular Hollywood film, Mad Max: Fury Road, is based in a post-apocalyptic world where there is a dictatorial, brutal leader who reigns over his subjects with an iron grip. This leader called Immortan Joe exercises control over his subjects by establishing a grip over the water supply. This post apocalyptic world is a product of ‘water wars’ where brutalities are suffered and inflicted over water. While this may seem to be a world relegated to the realm of fantasy and fiction, the fact is that India is dealing with an acute shortage of water which could make reality much closer to fiction than we fear.

To better understand the water crisis, we must first accept that we are facing a crisis. The fact that we are surrounded by water may give an impression that all the talk of a crisis is just a paranoia, but we couldn’t be more mistaken. Humans primarily rely on ‘fresh water’ for their survival. In terms of numbers, only 2.5 per cent of the earth’s water is fresh water and out of this 2.5per cent, two per cent is water that has been locked in polar ice caps and glaciers. That leaves all the people on the earth with about 0.5 per cent of fresh water. We use this water for drinking (about 10 per cent), for industries (about 20 per cent) and for agriculture/production of food (around 70 per cent). Eighty per cent of the water, therefore, is effectively used for drinking or putting food on our table.

Current state of affairs: It is shameful that this year, there is not a single Indian city that is capable of providing potable water from its tap. This is why close to 163 million Indians have no access to clean drinking water and India finds itself at the top of the list of countries with the worst access to clean water. As per NITI Aayog’s report, India is placed at 120th amongst 122 countries in the water quality index. Frighteningly, approximately 600 million Indians face high to extreme water stress and close to two lakh people die due to inadequate access to safe water every year. Further, the report stated that in 12 years, 40 per cent of the population will have no access to drinking water and by 2020, 21 cities, including New Delhi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, will run out of ground water. Groundwater is the primary source of water in most cities and the looming crisis, which is less than two years away, will affect close to 100 million people. Therefore, the talk of a ‘looming’ crisis is reckless because the fact is that we are in the midst of a water crisis, as we speak.

The way States are equipped to deal with this crisis does not inspire much confidence either. The NITI Aayog has ranked all States in India on 28 different indicators which covered various aspects, including groundwater, restoration of water bodies, irrigation etc. On the basis of these rankings, my home State, Jharkhand, disappointingly languishes at the bottom. The BJP Government in the State and Chief Minister Raghubar Das, however, do not consider this ranking as an insult. The situation is bound to get worse if we do not act with alacrity because India’s population will continue to grow and our farmers will not have the requisite resources to produce anywhere close to the amount of food required by our burgeoning population.

Reasons behind the crisis: The problem essentially is of demand and supply. There is a massive demand for water. And by 2030, it is estimated that the demand for water will be twice the available supply, which could result in a loss of six per cent to the GDP. What does not help matters is unrestricted pollution that has affected our water sources. Even the Ganga, which has immense religious and sentimental value, is so polluted that a task force has been set up to clean it. To make matters worse, if factors such as a growing population and reduced rainfall are added to the mix, it begins to increasingly look the perfect recipe for a disaster.

Way forward: There is a growing recognition that a crisis is in the offing which has prompted steps such as armed guards being stationed at reservoirs or trains being used to transport water to drought-affected areas. These actions, however, are reactionary in nature and serve as palliative measures. What is needed instead is a more coherent and professional approach. Unfortunately, I believe, the Government and the bureaucracy may not have the requisite expertise or bandwidth to tackle this crisis. Therefore, I submit that we would be better served by allowing experts, professionals to tackle the threat of a dry, thirsty country instead of expecting our elected representatives and bureaucrats to be the panacea to our water troubles. Of course, any course of action that expects to be effective, requires the support and backing of the Government but that does not necessarily mean that the initiative should be led by individuals who do not have the requisite information or expertise to deal with the crisis.

There are examples from our past that lend support to such an approach. India’s world renowned nuclear programme, for example, was largely born out of the genius, craft and dedication of Homi Bhabha, the father of India’s nuclear programme. It was Bhabha who while working at the India Institute of Science convinced Pandit Nehru of the importance of starting a nuclear programme and wrote to Nehru saying: “The development of atomic energy should be entrusted to a very small and high powered body composed of say, three people with executive power and answerable directly to the Prime Minister without any intervening link.” This proposal was accepted by Nehru and led to the establishment of the Atomic Energy Commission with Bhabha as its first director. Another example where India has benefitted from the expertise and intellectual capital of its citizens rather than purely relying on State actors is the ‘White Revolution’ whereby dairy farming became India’s largest self-sustaining industry under the leadership of Verghese Kurien.

Of course, I am not suggesting that the Government and the bureaucracy should abdicate responsibility from tackling the impending water crisis. Instead, the best way forward is for the Government to enable an independent body comprising of experts in the field of water conservation and policy to be allowed to do what they are good at without any fear of interference or red-tape. All these efforts must be supplanted by efforts of the Government and the citizens of the country. Let’s not forget that each and every one of us has a role to play in restricting the impact of this impending crisis by being responsible with our use of water. If we do not act with the swiftness that this situation demands, I fear that the Hollywood description of the ‘water wars’ will be looked back upon as far too timid.

(The writer is Jharkhand PCC president, former MP and IPS officer. Views are personal)

Writer: Ajoy Kumar

Courtesy: The Pioneer

India has made great progress towards achieving a low-carbon economy. Further onward movement is contingent on the implementation of plans.

According to the latest World Bank report, India has doubled its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) within a decade which stood at $2.597 trillion at the end of 2017. Amid the Asian bigwigs like China slowing down, India is bending the odds by posting impressive growth. According to a report by The International Monetary Fund (IMF), India’s economy is projected to grow by 7.4 per cent this year and 7.8 per cent in 2019. This stellar performance has powered our country ahead of even France which got relegated to the seventh position as per the World Bank report. These developments are heartening and instill pride in us as Indians, but the cost at which this progress is being posted is too steep. The very same cities that are the engines of growth are sinking with crumbling infrastructure and rising emission levels that are slowly rendering places unfit for human habitation.

What ails our cities? Pretty much one would say. According to the report, carbon footprints of 13,000 cities, as of June this year in the National Capital Region of Delhi has the highest annual carbon footprint in the country. In fact, Delhi’s annual Co2 emission of 69.4 million tonne is equal to the Co2 emission of Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai put together. When it comes to per capita CO emission, Chandigarh and Vadodara are far ahead of the rest with 3.9 tonne and 3.5 tonne respectively. Riding on the backdrop of increasing Co2 levels, extreme weather events have already started affecting Indian cities with frightening frequency. The report estimates that a record 360 million people will be exposed to extreme heat in 142 Indian cities by 2050 if rapidly rising Co2 levels and global warming continue. Temperatures in three Indian cities — Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi — in the last five decades have already seen a steady rise. In Chennai alone, temperature has increased by an astonishing 0.9°C since 1960-70.

The link between carbon emission and heating up of the world has been long established. The cities, which will emit more Co2, will see a faster rise in temperature as more Co2 concentration in the atmosphere means intense absorption of solar heat. Given this, the plight of the Indian cities can only get worse from the current position unless some radical measures are taken to drive down the carbon emissions. By 2030, Indian cities will produce 70 percent of the country’s wealth and be home to 590 million inhabitants. This will put additional burden on the environment as carbon emissions will surely rise unless decarbonisation strategies are implemented immediately.

The Government has been aware of the spiralling levels of emission. To curb the same, it has announced an ambitious target to make all new vehicles to be electric by 2030 — starting with taxis, e-rickshaws and buses and eventually, private vehicles. This by itself will reduce vehicular emissions, improve air quality and reduce dependence on foreign oil. But in practice, it sees like a lofty plan that has not accounted for some difficult challenges such as how the cities will negotiate the rise in vehicles with the implications on other urban objectives — such as exacerbated congestion and the need for an increased share of public transit. This proves that policy making and announcements must not dwell upon easier matters at hand. They must strive to solve complex issues and challenges first.

A sector-wise revamp is one method to achieve rapid decarbonisation of our cities. Residential emissions, transport emissions and commercial emissions must be identified and controlled. Limiting the registration of new vehicles or making registration of the same very expensive like Singapore can dissuade new vehicle purchases. Similarly, a cap can be put on how many new models vehicles a manufacturer can launch in the market. This will curtail rampant purchases. Instead, the vehicle manufacturer must be given full freedom and incentive to launch vehicles on renewable energy. These measures alone can contribute majorly towards reduction in carbon footprint.

Similarly, residential sector must be made aware of the grim situation in our cities due to the spiralling emissions. They must be encouraged to adopt energy-efficient appliances and buildings. The process of awareness and eventual adoption of the energy saving measures may take time and seem like an uphill task, but when sufficient traction is achieved, the benefits of the same travelling by word of mouth will themselves turn the decarbonisation drive into a full-fledged movement. A notable aspect here is that most of the people in our cities reside in multi-storied complexes without access to a terrace. This limits the option to set up solar panels for energy generation and hot water. This issue must be solved by the Government and RWAs. They must come together to ensure that every building has a common solar solution installed that provides benefits to all residents and in turn not only uses the idle space of the terraces across the city but also reduces carbon emission by reducing dependence on conventional coal based power.

Solutions towards a carbon emission free environment are many, the intention and implementation have to be present.

Writer: Kota Sriraj

Courtesy: The Pioneer

The forecast for climate change as a global concern paints a grim picture. If people do not act with earnest, it can snowball into a worldwide disaster soon.

According to a report by Archana Jyoti in a recent issue of The Pioneer, the latest World Bank report, titled “South Asia’s Hotspots: The Impact of Temperature and Precipitation Changes on Living Standards”, has an ominous message for India. Defining a “Hotspot” as a location in which changes in average temperature and precipitation will have a negative impact on living standards, the report says that hotspots are necessarily zones where temperatures are higher than those in the surrounding areas and which also reflect the local population’s socio-economic capacity to cope with climate change.

According to the report, by 2050, unchecked climate change, causing high temperatures and poor rainfall, would diminish the living standards of half of the county’s population, particularly farmers in Central India. The report further says that by 2050, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh will be the country’s top two States in terms of the number of hotspots in them.

Both are likely to experience a decline of more than nine per cent in living standards, followed by Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. The Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, according to the report, would have seven — Chandrapur, Nagpur, Gondiya, Wardha and Yavatmal — of the 10 worst-hit of the country’s hotspot districts.

The report scripts a grim scenario. India’s average temperature is expected to rise by one degree to two degrees centigrade by 2050 even if preventive measures are taken along the lines of those recommended by the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. Without measures, the increase will be between one-and-a-half and three per cent. About 600 million people will be affected if the report’s prediction comes true, the likelihood of which is very considerable. There are other indications that climate change has begun taking its toll on India. The retreat of the Himalayan glaciers is one of them.

A joint research of scientists from Kumaun University, Uttarakhand Space Application Centre, Dehradun; and Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata, have found that the Pindari glacier, which feeds the Pindar River, a major tributary of the Alaknanda River, has retreated cumulatively by 1,569.01 metres over the four decades, which means an average retreat rate of 51.23 metres each year.

A team from Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, reported in Annals of Glaciology in 2016, that the lengths of 43 Himalayan glaciers, including the Pindari, had changed between 1850 and 2010. Referring to the Pindari glacier, their report stated that the retreat had amounted to a total of 3.08 kilometres from 1850 to 2010.  This indicates an increase of 30 metres each year against the Pindari glacier’s 51.23 metres. Clearly, there has been an acceleration during the last four decades.

Another study by scientists from Indian Space Research Organisation and geologists from Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, has shown that the Khatling trunk glacier, which feeds the Bhilangna river, a tributary of the Bhagirathi, has retreated by 4,340 metres between 1965 and 2014, besides increasing the number of glaciers fragmenting from it from 20 to 33. The Himalaya being the source of water in the case of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, the retreat of the Himalayan glaciers has serious implications for water supply and storage in the region.

This, in turn, has serious implications for agriculture in the entire region spanning the basins on both rivers stretching over almost the whole of northern and central parts of the country. What this means for living standards of farmers and all others involved in the distribution of farm inputs (fertilisers, for example) and products hardly needs elaboration.

Nor can there be any doubt that the continuing retreat of the glaciers is a result of global warming. According to the IISER report, the Himalaya and Karakoram ranges have warmed up by 1.5 degrees Centigrade between 1850 and 2010. The question is: What is to be done?

One needs to remember here that climate change is a global phenomenon and the prognosis is grim worldwide. A report titled The Global Climate Change Regime by the United States-based Council on Foreign Relations’ International Institutions and Global Governance Programme, cited, in 2013, the American Meteorological Society as mentioning a 90 percent probability of global temperatures rising by 3.5 to 7.4 degrees Celsius in less than 100 years, with even greater increases over land and the poles.

The consequences would include rising sea levels, drowning of island nations, extreme and volatile weather patterns, desertification, diminishing food production, famine, water shortages the flooding of cities, mass migrations of humans and other living species, creation of climate refugees, extinction of plant and animal life, mass destruction of forests, and a situation in which playing and working in the open could be dangerous for people in the hottest parts of the year. The worst victims would be the poor who would be the hardest hit both by rising food prices following declining production and intensified weather disasters.

The Paris Agreement on climate change raised hopes that at least some action would follow. Unfortunately, the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement has dealt a severe blow these. While, one needs to see how damaging its impact will be. India needs to focus on what it can do. Curbing the emission levels of Greenhouse gases is important and efforts in that direction need to be accelerated. The same applies to the transition to more environment-friendly sources of energy like solar power. The civic bodies could play an important role in this by switching over to solar street lighting.

Unfortunately, the most important cause of global warming, increase in human activity, is not being attended to. A survey, published in The Environment Research Letters, found that 97 percent of scientific studies on climate change concluded that human activity, due to the consumption of fossil fuels, was causing global warming. India is sitting on a population bomb. Its population,40.9 crore in 1955, rose to 100.3 crore in 2018 (latest figures). Surpassing China’s as the highest in the world in 2021, it is set to rise to 170.5 crore in 2050.

It is not difficult to visualise what impact increasing population, leading to increasing activity, would have on global warming. Worse, very little is being done worldwide to counter the continuing phenomenal increase in world population, which is set to rise to over 10 billion by 2060.

This is hardly surprising. As early as 1967, Desmond Morris had written in The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal, “At the end of the 17th century the world population of naked apes [humans] was only 500 million. It has now risen to 3,000 million. Every twenty-four hours it increases by another 150,000. ….In 260 years’ time, if the rate increase stays steady — which is unlikely — there will be a seething mass of 400,000 million naked apes crowding the face of the earth.” He adds, “To put it another way, the densities we now experience in our major cities would exist in every corner of the globe. The consequence of this for all forms of wildlife is obvious. The effect it would have on our own species is equally depressing.”

People who do not act against a looming disaster are fated to be consumed by it.

Writer: Hiranmay Karlekar

Courtesy: The Pioneer

India’s biggest cyber and MNC hub has pollution to offer, thanks to the diesel gensets. If the people there are to stay healthy, something needs to change.

A recently released report by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) revealed that the use of diesel gensets (DG sets) in residential societies across Gurugram was responsible for increasing the air pollution in the city by as much as 30 per cent. The CSE report further stated that PM2.5 and PM10 levels significantly rose due to the use of diesel gensets and lasted up to one hour after  they were switched off. It also found that when gensets were used for several hours, the rise in PM10 was 50 per cent to 100 per cent higher than what was registered before these were switched on. Pollutants also reportedly remained in the air far longer.

Sustained use of gensets for eight hours or more in a day led to a situation wherein PM2.5 levels breached the 300-mark while PM10 levels were at 1,900. Thanks to erratic power supply by the State Government and the unfortunate choice of DG sets by residents desperate to bridge the demand supply gap, everybody is doomed as pollution levels have spiked up by nearly 15 times of the safe levels during peak demand period. Ironically, the users of these DG sets, especially in housing societies and multi-storeyed complexes, are also the first one to suffer due to pollution emitted by these DG sets making the children and elderly vulnerable. Those with respiratory problems become risk-prone as well.

Dubbed as the millennium city, Gurugram has always been the example cited for extreme commercial progress in the backdrop of severe infrastructure failure. The residents of the satellite city to Delhi are always on tenterhooks for power and water as the absence of one is usually followed by the disappearance of the other.

A surprising aspect is the attitude of successive State Governments which, in spite of earning good tax revenues, have been unable to channelise anything towards its infrastructure planning and development. All ambitious policies remain confined to paper. As a result the citizens are left to their devices, leading to short-term and quick-fix solutions such as DG sets which are nothing short of an environmental disaster.

For instance, Haryana’s Renewable Energy Department (HAREDA), in 2016, asked large industrial and commercial establishments to install solar panels on their roofs so that they can use the power generated from solar energy instead of diesel sets. However, this order was not applicable to residential buildings. This omission is now costing dearly to the fragile ecology of the region.

Additionally, to make matters worse, the CSE report found that big commercial buildings are not fully compliant with the HAREDA order as only five per cent of commercial establishments followed the directive while the rest 95 per cent are yet to do so.

This means that, in addition to the scores of residential highrises teeming with people that are dotting Gurugram, the balance 95 per cent of commercial buildings are now relying on DG sets to satisfy their power needs.

It is worrisome that there is no foolproof audit mechanism in place for solar power buildings as well. This means that quality and efficiency parameters for solar power set-ups may not be up to the mark, making them just a formality to satisfy the Government regulation and possibly to derive solar power sops and benefits pertaining to property tax filing and so on.

The authorities in Haryana have long taken the benefits of the city that is so well placed geographically with the airport within half an hour reach, making the city a favorite for business houses and multi-national corporations to quickly set up their offices. But this long-term inability of the Government to provide basic power and water to its residents and even motorable roads in some areas is embarrassing for India compared to the international business community.

Attracting foreign investment through jazzy Press events, swish e-portals and apps is not the only thing to do for the authorities. The Government must focus on the experience of the investor as he steps on the ground level.

How well the people live and prosper and how well the environment is taken care of shows the Government’s sensitivity towards the environment and its own people. Even after decades of development, nearly 70 per cent of the people in Gurugram depend on ground water in absence of piped water supply. Add to this the sewage situation is also in dire straits.

These facts prove one thing about India: That it is a country interested in profits and not in the welfare of its people or its environment. This image has to change fast and no one else can do it better than the present Government which has both the resolve and the mandate to undo the damage of decades and turn Gurugram around.

(The writer is an environmental journalist)

Writer:  Kota Sriraj

Courtesy: The Pioneer

The National Democratic Alliance on Wednesday announced its ambitious plan to reform higher education in the country. The Human Resources Development Ministry, headed by Prakash Javadekar, announced that it has drafted a bill titled ‘Higher Education Commission of India (Repeal of UGC Act), 2018’, which plans to scrap the University Grants Commission and replace it with a ‘Higher Education Commission’.

Education is one sector which needs to mutate as knowledge sources and their application become more varied and complex in probing times and the regulatory systems or norms, therefore, need to rise above orthodoxies and become dynamic. The HRD Ministry has done just that by preparing a draft Act that will scrap the UGC with a new all-pervasive Higher Education Commission of India. According to the proposals, which HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar has left open to amendments, the new panel would solely look into academic matters and uniformity of standards in providing quality instruction. Monetary grants would be the purview of the ministry so that the expert commission would be free of bureaucratese and instead concentrate on things that matter — mentoring institutions, ensuring meritocracy, encouraging research, standardising the quality of training, identifying bogus institutions, monitor faculty benchmarks and, in short, ensure autonomy of institutions. Higher education in India is indeed in a grave crisis mode as universities in our hinterland, too, have made it to the global index whereas, except IITs, none of our institutions are in the wanted list. If recent entrance test results to advanced courses are any indication, then the meritorious performances are a dismal ratio and need a quick fix. The rote learning method needs to be eliminated and replaced by one that assesses comprehension and application of acquired knowledge. Our students need to be skilled and industry-ready and capable of driving innovation, rather than becoming formulaic clones. Other countries like UK and the Australia have already moved to independent commissions of higher education.

Absolutism of the UGC has had many casualties. Vice-Chancellors have had to be at the beck and call of an official for routine fund clearances, leave aside seeking one for innovations. A performance-linked funding pattern that would encourage competitive scholarship, was never considered. UGC has not quite been able to attract world-class faculty to teach at Indian universities in a visiting capacity. We have not been able to benchmark ourselves internationally as an education hub the way we have in the health sector, medical tourism now being the most sought after. Even China has worked towards evolving a strong university culture that is attracting students from across the world, particularly the region. The UGC’s ad hoc system of rewarding research, based on academic performance, rather than subjecting it to expert reviews, have discouraged path-breaking thought. Besides, there is a multiplicity of authorities for technical education, be it the AICTE and for medical courses MCI, that often run at cross purposes and add to the confusion with overlapping functionalities. Of course, it is brave of the Modi Government to push through well-intentioned reforms that have been in the lab since UPA days. But it has practical challenges to meet. Will the higher education reforms be effective enough without an overhaul of the National Education Policy? This would make the new move look knee-jerk. Then there is the task of keeping it apolitical. By subjecting matters of appointment in leadership positions at all universities, even if they are established under state law, to the panel may invite tendencies of favouritism, which is a thin line to walk. Even if you free up teachers, can politicisation of students be tamed? Most importantly, the assessment system itself has to be graded and appropriate experts brought in to understand premium quality of elite institutions, which need to be given more room for autonomy. Most important though is filling up teaching vacancies in Central universities across the country, including the prized AIIMS. Some varsities in far-flung states have a shocking gap of faculty vacancies by over 50 per cent. Can an ecosystem be developed at institutions set up in backward pockets that will be attractive enough to draw in quality teachers in the first place? These grassroots issues need to be addressed on an emergency basis too.

Writer: Pioneer

Courtesy:  The Pioneer

The UK and five other nations, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Romania, have been referred to Europe’s highest court for failing to tackle illegal levels of air pollution. The European court of justice (ECJ) has the power to impose multimillion Euro fines if the countries do not address the problem swiftly.
The Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, gave the six, also including Italy, Hungary and Romania, a last chance in January to take the required steps to improve air quality after years of warnings.

However, EU Environment Commissioner Karmenu Vella told a press conference in Brussels the six, which include Europe’s top four economies, had not acted quickly enough.

“The commission had to conclude that … That the additional measures proposed are not sufficient to comply with air quality standards as soon as possible, and therefore are being referred to court,” Vella said.”We cannot wait any longer,” Vella said, warning that Brussels may end up waiting several more years before the countries put measures in place.

Vella had also given Spain, the Czech Republic and Slovakia a last chance in January to start complying with EU standards and decided to give them a reprieve.

“The measures that are planned or being put in place appear to be able to tackle (exceeded limits) if they are fully and immediately implemented,” Vella said.But he warned the commission was keeping the three under review.

In January, the nine countries were found to regularly exceed emissions limits set to protect Europeans against particulate matter and azote dioxide, both pollutants.The EU estimates that air pollution costs the bloc 20 billion euros (USD 24.7 billion) a year in health costs, but says this could be reduced if member states comply with agreed emissions limits.

Writer: Adil Husain

Courtesy: The Pioneer

Global Warming, Pollution Myth & Realities?

The Ghost of Global Warming is haunting every citizen and the media is consistently drawing attention of all those who matter. But so far the ground realities are concerned both the State Governments and the Central continue to abuse the nature left right and center. During sixties in India it was a case of nature against mankind as we as a Nation had to face furry of floods, droughts and natural calamities that aggravated poverty, hunger. Now it is a case of mankind against Nature.

Today’s Planners i.e. Political class and bureaucrats plan massive projects while sitting in Air Conditioned Chambers based on DATA that is invariably outdated and cannot be relied upon. The reasons for such a blunder are that the DATA picked up at the time idea is conceived it is already almost three years old. By the time the plan is prepared the DATA becomes six years old and by the time the plan reaches drawing boards it is older by 9 years and when the actual execution starts the same is aged about 15 years.

It is shameful that both the Apex Court and Central Government are at logger heads on the issue of the powers to protect the forest areas between the?Central Empowered Committee (CEC)

constituted by the Apex Court and?Forest Advisory  Committee (FAC) constituted by the Central Government?under the Ministry of Environment &?Forests. The media has reported very ?recently that FAC had accorded approvals to many ill conceived projects?in the Forest Areas without applica?tion of mind. It may also be worth?while to note here that despite presence of Supreme Court Monitoring?Committee in Dehradun Mussoorie? Valley massive deforestation has taken place and forests continue to be ?erased. It is matter of record that the?Apex Court had ignored the recommendations of CEC regarding protection of Forests in the Capital City of Delhi that too in an area that was mandated to be protected under Master Plan of Delhi and squarely covered under the Judgment of Apex Court itself.

All said and done our efforts seems to have lost the track and we continue to deplete the Green Cover without application of mind. One such classic example is missing Public Transport Policy at National Level. The last Public Transport Policy was prepared some where in 1977 and thereafter till date no efforts have been made to prepare policy on Surface Transport at National Level except in 2006 when Draft National Policy on Public Transport has been prepared but without will to implement.

It appears that the lack of will has percolated down from the Apex Planning Body of the Country i.e. National Planning Commission. If we read the Transport Policy of 10th Planning Commission Report one would find that the Plan has been prepared for Civil Aviation, Railways and Shipping. The only reference to the Surface Transport is profitability and operations of State Transport Under takings.

As a consequence to the myopic planning we find Marutas Bullock Carts fitted with Diesel Engines ferrying in many parts of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana. One can spot cycle rickshaws fitted with scooters on many roads of almost most of the cities of the country. Needless to say that all the so called improvised vehicle ply on roads without insurance, registration and do not pay any tax. Only GOD can save the victims if any of such vehicle is involved in accident no steps have been taken by the Governments to curb use of such vehicles that are dangerous not only for other road users but also pollute the environment.

In absence of National Policy on Public Transport the Public Transport systems within and Intercity have virtually collapsed. No one seems to be bothered about ever growing number of personal vehicles on the roads leading to multiple problems impact of which has not been even assessed and analyzed till date. The missing Public Transport is one of the major contributors to wards Global warming some of which are as under:-

1. Over crowding of roads
2. ? Increase in congestion on City/ Inter City roads
3. ?Grossly inadequate parking space
4. ? In turn multiplies congestion on roads and traffic Islands;
5. Traffic snarls and blockades increase in fuel emissions
6. Our survey conducted on 20 such intersections revealed that annually fuel worth Rs. 24 Crores and man hours worth Rs. 1300 Crores go up in smoke. The number of such intersections in the City of Delhi has increased manifold due to construction of Flyovers on the City Roads as well as Highways Classic Example Express Highway on NH-8

Increase in Pollution due to emissions at traffic congested intersections and Roads;

1. Increase in fuel import bill and foreign exchange outgo;
2. Necessitates Road widening;
3. Depletion of Green cover The photographs on NH 8 prove this point Wherever flyover are under construction- Smalkha, Panipat Haryana, Zirakpur Punjab. The Roads after Karnal in Haryana have dense population of trees on the both sides of the road. The moment you enter this area the temperature needle on the Dash Board drops. The cause of concern is that the way NH-1 is being widened these trees would disappear as has happened in Ambala Cantt where massive fly over has come up. It may be noted that the trees could have been protected by following Karnal Bye pass where the vehicles heading for Ambala use the central roads and City Bound vehicles use the service roads. There was no need of huge capital investment and criminal wastage of State Exchequer and massive deforestation. What all was required a bit of planning and application of mind.
4. Increase in temperature- The need air conditioned cars, Air Conditioners and Coolers at home;
5. Increase in power demand that’s already short in supply;
6. Generation of more power increase in coal consumption.

No one seems to be bothered about the quality of Fuel produced and sold at Petrol Pumps. Adulteration of Petrol, Diesel seems to be most profitable business. Who cares so long as corrupt continue to make money. The Politicians and Bureaucrats are bothered about wide roads to increase the speed and it hardly matters that the roads are without trees.

If we go around the Country we find that in order to accommodate the ever growing need of space to accommodate ever increasing number of personal vehicles massive deforestation has taken place whether it is Mumbai  Pune Expressway or NH- 1 or NH-8. Even accredited NGO without any credible studies and analysis continue to blame the Diesel vehicles responsible for pollution little realizing that world over the Diesel is being

used as one of the fuels for public transport.. During my five days stay at Istanbul with a population almost equal to Delhi, I did not find even a single vehicle on the roads emitting smoke. Even the number of petrol pumps is much less than we have at Delhi. The only reason is that quality of Fuel and vehicles is ensured.

We claim that the only city in the World has entire bus fleet. If we go around the Country we find that in order to accommodate the ever growing need of space to accommodate ever increasing number of personal vehicles massive deforestation has taken place whether it is Mumbai Pune Expressway or NH-1 or NH-8. Even accredited NGO without any credible studies and analysis continue to blame the Diesel vehicles responsible for pollution little realizing that world over the Diesel is being used as one of the fuels for public transport.

operating on Cleanest Fuel is the City of Delhi. We don’t assess the damage to the environment caused by the long queues of vehicles waiting for their turn at such filling stations located on the main City Roads due to congestion on roads. Even the suggestions to the State Government to change the filling timings from peak hours to non peak hours did not find favor. Who cares? Because as and when Bureaucrats, Politicians, Judges or Senior Police Officers pass through particular area their vehicles find smooth traffic as the Traffic cops manage to give them smooth rides.

It is the common citizens who breaths pollution and bears the brunt. The lax attitude of the Ministry of Environment & Forest is clear from the fact that the Ministry of Environment & Forest has issued a White Paper on Pollution in the City of Delhi still the position continues to go from bad to worse.

– OE News Bureau

We need a master plan to increase our water storage capacity, improve irrigation facilities and create water networks across the country that links the draught prone with those experiencing floods. Water is one crucial factor that sustains life on earth. Yet we take water for granted unless of course reminded of its importance by Bollywood actors celebrating water-less Holi. India is estimated to have a mere 4 per cent of global water resources, while it has to support 16 per cent of the world’s population. Merely by that equation India is water stressed if not water starved.

Billion Cubic Metres (BCM) of which three-fourth get precipitated during the monsoon season (June to September). Of this 4000 BCM, it is estimated that approximately 1120 BCM are only utilisable. That in turn adds to the stress. When rains fail, this situation gets compounded. For instance, the rainfall in 2009 in India was a mere 78 percent of the long-term average rainfall. A 22 per cent shortfall is disastrous in such a situation. Coincidentally the UPA under Manmohan Singh was reelected only in May 2009. Was Mother Nature warning us?

Similarly in 2012 we faced “drought like” situations in several parts of India as rainfall was 92 per cent of the long term average. This brings in another dimension to our water crisis. When it rains, it pours during the monsoon. For instance in 2012 nearly 58 per cent districts recorded excess rain causing flood (the balance 42 per cent face moderate to severe shortfall).

It is in this connection that the National Water Policy notes that the availability of water is highly uneven in both space and time. Precipitation is confined to only about three or four months in a year and varies from 100 mm in the western parts of Rajasthan to over 10,000 mm at Cherrapunji in Meghalaya. No wonder India alternates between floods in some part and drought in other. The challenge is to link the two.

Dream remained as one

That takes me to the Budget of 2004-05 where finance minister P Chidambaram said, “I now turn to one of my big dreams. Water is the lifeline of civiliyation. We have been warned that the biggest crisis that the world will face in the 21st century will be the crisis of water.

“And his response to this “crisis?” “I therefore propose an ambitious scheme. Through the ages, Indian agriculture has been sustained by natural and man made water bodies such as lakes, tanks, ponds and similar structures. It has been estimated that there are more than a million such structures and about 500,000 are used for irrigation. Many of them have fallen into disuse. Many of them have accumulated silt. Many require urgent repairs.”

Absolutely spot on I thought.In fact his proposal captured the imagination of the entire nation then. Proposing to launch “a massive scheme to repair, renovate and restore all the water bodies that are directly linked to agriculture” the FM sought to begin “with pilot projects in at least five districts” one district in each of the five regions of the country.

And once the pilot projects were completed and validated, the government was to “launch the National Water Resources Development Project and complete it over a period of 7 to 10 years.” In conclusion, the FM added “It is my hope that by the beginning of the next decade all water bodies in India will be restored to their original glory and that the storage capacity of these water bodies will be augmented by at least 100 per cent.”

Once again in his Budget speech of 2005-06 the FM visited the subject albeit briefly. The zest that was palpable the previous year was missing. The grand announcement of July 2004 for a pilot project when the Budget was presented was still on the drawing board and expected to be “launched in the month of March 2005.”

That was the last time I heard of the FM speak of his “big dream.” The promise made almost a decade ago on the floor of the Parliament on augmenting the storage capacity of water bodies “by at-least 100 per cent” remains unfulfilled even to this day. So much for government’s concern for farmers, agriculture and creating basic rural infrastructure!

Now to the second leg of the water problem – the need for irrigation facility as delivery mechanism. Once again the FM was spot on with his diagnosis. “The Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme (AIBP) was introduced in 1996-97 and was allotted large funds year after year. Yet, out of 178 large and medium irrigation projects that were identified, only 28 have been completed.” Therefore the UPA government came with a practical proposal to “restructure” AIBP by ensuring “truly last mile projects that can be completed by March 2005 will be given overriding priority, and other projects that can be completed by March 2006 will also be taken up in the current year.”

Well did the government restructure AIBP? The answer lies in the Budget speech of Mr Pranab Mukherjee of 2012 where he adds, “To maximize the flow of benefits from investments in irrigation projects, structural changes in AIBP are being made.” Readers may note the change in semantics: “restructure AIBP” of 2005 had become “structural changes in AIBP” by 2012!

Despite all the bluster of the FM in his Budget, the fact remains that the irrigated land as a percentage to total agricultural land in India has improved marginally between 31.6 per cent in 2004 to approximately 37 per cent in 2011. This eloquently captures the neglect of irrigation in India by UPA to this date.

The great Indian rope trick

It is in this connection that a target of creating an additional “irrigation potential” of 10 million hectares (mha) between 2005-06 and 2008-09 was fixed. Interestingly, data with the ministry of water resources claim that the government “achieved” a physical target of 7.3 mha.

How much of this was “actually” achieved and resulted in improving farm production is anybody’s guess. Yet till 2012 since its inception in 1996 the AIBP has an outlay in excess of Rs 55,000 crores either as central grant or loans. While the sums do indeed look massive the fact remains the overall accretion to agriculture lands under irrigation has not improved significantly. Pointing to this anomaly Harish Damodaran in a well researched article in The Hindu Business Line pointed out (March 6, 2007) despite the Centre spending a total of Rs 20,598.48 crore (Rs 205.98 billion) under the AIBP, with the states releasing an additional Rs 15,000 crore (Rs 150 billion) or so since its inception in 1996.

So how much of new “irrigation potential” has been created under the AIBP? According to Harish Damodaran, “The cumulative figure from 1995-96 to 2005-06 comes to 4.04 mha, with another 0.9 mha estimated to be creat- ed this fiscal. All that adds to some five mha over a 11-year span.” While the physical accretion is minimal the amount spent on AIBP is indeed gargantuan. It is in this connection the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) in its Report No. 15 of 2004 (Civil) commented among other things, it noted that over 35 of the expenditures under AIBP were “diverted, parked or misutilised.”

In short, as the joke goes amongst economists, AIBP is neither accelerated nor does it benefit farmers. At best it is yet another avenue for loot and scoot. That explains why states like Maharashtra despite having several such irrigation schemes, funded both by the state and central government, is perennially water starved. And that would include Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Orissa amongst others.

This in turn leads to farm stress and resultant suicides which in turn trigger another round of committees, reports, schemes, programs and once again loot. It may be noted that India is experiencing its fourth drought in a dozen years. Needless to emphasize, this raises concerns about the reliability of the country’s primary source of fresh water, the monsoon rains. Scientists warn that such trends are likely to intensify in the coming decades because of climate changes caused by the human release of greenhouse gases.

India with large sections of poor is extremely vulnerable to such weather patterns. We need huge quantities of food to feed our population. For that we require water. So would our industry which is expected to grow exponentially. Weather patterns show remarkable departure from the past if it is drought in one part of the country we will have floods. Either way it is a disaster.

Ideally we need a master plan to increase our water storage capacity, improve irrigation facilities and create water networks across the country that links the draught prone with those experiencing floods. Unfortunately the decade of UPA rule, like so many other spheres been a disaster on water management too. Will someone tell the PM that we can have a water-less Holi but not water-less agriculture? Will someone educate the PM that a sustainable development model depends on something as elementary but as crucial as water. For too long we have ignored this fundamental fact. The water-less Holi was a rude wake up call.

– OE News Bureau

In order to attract more international students to Japan, The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan (MEXT) launched the “Global 30” Project for Establishing Core Universities for Internationalization and select- ed 13 universities to function as core institutions to receive and educate students from abroad. Under the Project, a student can obtain a degree from a prestigious Japanese university by taking programs taught in English, both in undergraduate and graduate levels.

To promote the Project and recruit prospective students, we are advertizing our newly established English courses abroad. Universities under the “Global 30” Project include Tohoku University, University of Tsukuba, The University of Tokyo, Nagoya University, Kyoto University, Osaka University, Kyushu University, Keio University, Sophia University, Meiji University, Waseda University, Doshisha University, and Ritsumeikan University (13 universities total).

Contents of the Seminars included.

(1) Presentations by the “Global 30” Project universities. Universities involved in the “Global 30” Project present brief overviews concerning their education systems, programs, admission procedures, etc.

(2) Lecture demonstrations – We hope participants will actively join in the lectures given by professors of the “Global 30” Project universities.

(3) Individual consultation For questions concerning educational systems and programs, admission procedures, characteristics, etc., the “Global 30? Project universities will have booths for advice and to answer questions of participants who intend to study in Japan. Japan Student Services Organization (JASSO) booth will broadly inform participants about Study in Japan.

List of Universities participating in Delhi (India) /Bangalore (India) included:- ” Tohoku University, University of Tsukuba, The University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, Osaka University, Kyushu University, Keio University, Sophia University (Bangalore only), Meiji University, Doshisha University, and Ritsumeikan University Japan Student Services Organization(JASSO)

‘Higher Education is Japan core strength that made it a global technology super power’

The iconic face of India in Japan is former Indian Ambassador to Japan Mr Aftab Seth who is playing the role of a catalyst to bridge the gap between unexplored land of opportunity for the Indian Gen-Next. Mr Seth highlights the tremendous depth of Japanese core strength that is yet to be tapped in India Higher education. Here are some of the most fascinating excerpts of his interview with Opinion Express associate editor Dr Rahul Misra.

Q Japan higher education system has been close knit hence globally people are unaware of its merits, kindly enlighten us about the cost factor, and Work culture of Japanese Universities?A. From the time of the Meiji restoration in 1868 the Japanese university system was opened to the world. As the first university was Keio, set up in 1858, 10 years university was Keio, set up in 1858, 10 years before the restoration, it was deeply influenced by knowledge acquired by the founder Yukichi Fukuzawa from the Dutch in Nagasaki in Kyushu. As other universities were set up in 1870s by the Imperial government they depended greatly on professors from the west, USA Britain and for medicine from Germany. Till the early 60s all medical students had to learn German because of the text books. It is thus not quite accurate to call the Japanese university system closed. It became like this later, but the early years were of openness.

So much so, that Tenshin Okakura an art historian and friend of Tagore, was able to write a book on Japanese tea in English and a play the “Silver Fox” in English directly. The xenophobia and hostility towards foreign influences was a product of the military dominated politics of the 20s and 30s and during the war till 1945. Under the American occupation from 1945 to 1952 all institutions including educational ones underwent reform to purge ideas which smacked of the Fascist interwar years. Universities were again open to foreign influence and to student exchanges. Japanese universities as a general rule offer high class education at a price which is less than private universities in the USA. State universities in Japan tend to be reasonable com- pared to top private ones like Keio or Waseda founded by Okuma Shigenobu in 1888.

Q. Japan is center of great cutting edge technologies, R&D labs etc. It is associated with several hi-ttech products and services yet its Universities are not internationally known brands, why?

A. The reason that Universities in Japan are less well known abroad is because of several factors. Japanese universities may not be known in India or the west but in China and the South East they have been well known since 1895 when Japan defeated China and in 1905 defeated Imperial Russia.

Several leading Chinese intellectuals like Sun Yat Sen studied in Japan and were influenced by Japanese ideas. Nationalist leaders of Vietnam struggling against French colonial rule established in the 1880s were deeply inspired by the Russo Japanese war. Phan Boi Chau one such leader traveled to Japan seeking help. Leaders such as Okuma and Inukai gave help by inviting 100 young Vietnamese boys to study at Japanese universities. Japanese technology has been known even before the war in East Asia. Korea a colony of Japan from 1910 to 1945 also had many generations of students who were educated in Japan. It is correct that top places like the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo University, Keio University with excellent R&D faculties are not well known abroad.

Q. English language is a deterrent to study in Japan?

A. The English language has been a deterrent so far. But this is changing. The Japanese have a complex about their inability to master alien tongues. Slowly but surely this changing and Japanese are acquiring huge skills in learning English language.

Q. 4. Group 30 Universities from Japan recently established an office in India to attract Indian students to Japan, why this initiative is taken at this time? What road map and benefits shall be made to Indian students intending to go to overseas destinations with this initiative?

A. The G-30 initiative by PM Fukuda in 2008 is aimed at increasing the number of foreign students in Japan from the present 130000 to 300000 by 2012. The Ritsumeikan office established in October 2010 at the Japan Foundation building is part of this initiative. Waseda has an office in Vietnam and other Universities have been given responsibility for other territories. As part of this work we helped the G30 in January 2011 to invite students from top schools in Delhi and other cities to attend a seminar addressed by the representatives of leading Japanese universities. I inaugurated this seminar. The purpose is to attract young talent to study in Japan. The benefit Indian students would derive from such study are explained at such seminars. To make it easier some universities like Keio have started English medium classes at the Fujisawa campus which teaches all high tech subjects such as IT, Energy, environmental science and others. Keio has a separate initiative GIGA which aims to attract bright youth to study at the undergraduate level. Post graduate schools in many leading universities have been conducting their classes in English for some years now. This is a trend that is growing.

Q. Any synergies that are possible between private universities between India and Japan with this Group 30 University consortium?

A. PM Abe in 2007 organised the first University Vice Chancellors conference in Delhi to bring together leaders of 12 top universities in both countries. The conference which I attended, as the international adviser to Keio which was the Japanese Co Chairman with the UGC Chairman on the Indian side, led to Keio signing MOUs with 11 top Indian universities including 5 IITs. The synergy between our institutions was well demonstrated by this event.

– OE News Bureau

In the early 1930s, when we were born, the world population was just 2 billion; now it is more than two and a half times as large and still growing rapidly. The population of the United States is increasing much more slowly than the world average, but it has more than doubled in only six decades -- from 120 million in 1928 to 250 million in 1990. Such a huge population expansion within two or three generations can by itself account for a great many changes in the social and economic institutions of a society. It also is very frightening to those of us who spend our lives trying to keep track of the implications of the population explosion.

This sequel to Paul Ehrlich's 1968 landmark bestseller The Population Bomb examines the critical choices we face today and proposes an agenda for the 1990s to avoid global ecocide. The Population Explosion vividly describes how the Earth's population, growing by 95 million people a year, is rapidly depleting the planet's resources, resulting in famine, global warming, acid rain, and other major problems. Paul and Anne Ehrlich also clearly and concisely point to immediate action that will lessen the threat of ruin and begin to build a more peaceful, sane, and secure world.

A SLOW START

One of the toughest things for a population biologist to reconcile is the contrast between his or her recognition that civilization is in imminent serious jeopardy and the modest level of concern that population issues generate among the public and even among elected officials.

Much of the reason for this discrepancy lies in the slow development of the problem. People aren't scared because they evolved biologically and culturally to respond to short-term "fires" and to tune out long-term "trends" over which they had no control. Only if we do what doesn't come naturally -- if we determinedly focus on what seem to be gradual or nearly imperceptible changes -- can the outlines of our predicament be perceived clearly enough to be frightening.

Our own species, Homo sapiens, evolved a few hundred thousand years ago. Some ten thousand years ago, when agriculture was invented, probably no more than five million people inhabited Earth -- fewer than now live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Even at the time of Christ, two thousand years ago, the entire human population was roughly the size of the population of the United States today; by 1650 there were only 500 million people and in 1850 only a little over a billion. Since there are now well past 5 billion people, the vast majority of the population explosion has taken place in less than a tenth of one percent of the history of Homo sapiens.

This is a remarkable change in the abundance of a single species. After an unhurried pace of growth over most of our history, the expansion of the population accelerated during the Industrial Revolution and really shot up after 1950. Since the mid-century, the human population has been growing at annual rates ranging from about 1.7 to 2.1 percent per year, doubling in forty years or less. Some groups have grown significantly faster; the population of the African nation of Kenya^ was estimated to be increasing by over 4 percent annually during the 1980s -- a rate that if continued would double the nation's population in only seventeen years. That rate did continue for over a decade and only recently has shown slight signs of slowing. Meanwhile, other nations, such as those of northern Europe, have grown much more slowly in recent decades.

But even the highest growth rates are still slow-motion changes compared to events we easily notice and react to. A car swerving at us on the highway is avoided by actions taking a few

DEMOGRAPHIC FACTS

Ten Most Populous Countries

1. China

Population: 1,338,612,968 (Excluding Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau)

Percentage of World Population: 19.6

Did you know?

• In 1979, China introduced a one-child policy to curb population growth. About 36 percent of China's population is currently subject to this policy.
• China's biggest cities, Shanghai and Beijing, each count more than 17 million people in their respective municipalities.
• Between 1978 and 2005, China's level of urbanization increased from 17.4 to 41.8 percent. (Photo: Reuters)

2. India

Population: 1,163,408,098

Percentage of World Population: 17.1

Did you know?

• India is a remarkably diverse country: It is estimated that only the continent of Africa exceeds the linguistic, cultural, and genetic diversity of India.
• There are more than two thousand ethnic groups in India.
• More than two hundred languages are spoken in India, 22 of them are official languages.

3. United States

Population: 300,009,000

Percentage of World Population: 4.4

Demographic Facts:

• Every eight seconds, a baby is born in the U.S. Every twelve seconds, someone dies.
• More than 60 percent of all Americans live in one of the 51 metropolitan areas with a population of more than 1 million people.
• The population growth in the U.S. is among the highest in industrialized countries. In 2050, the U.S. population could reach 439 million.

4. Indonesia

Population: 230,168,000

Percentage of World Population: 3.4

Did you know?

• Indonesia's 230 million people live on about 6,000 islands scattered across both sides of the equator.
• Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world. About 86 percent of Indonesia's population is Muslim.
• The island of Java is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. More than 107 million people live in an area that is the size of New York State.

5. Brazil

Population: 191,109,937

Percentage of World population: 2.8

Did you know?

• The largest cities in Brazil are Sao Paulo (19.6 million people) and Rio de Janeiro (7 million people).
• The ancestors of most Brazilians are indigenous people, Portuguese colonists, and African slaves.
• Today, Brazil has the biggest Japanese (1.6 million people) and Italian populations (25 million people) outside their home

6. Pakistan

Population: 176,242,949

Percentage of World Population: 2.6

Did you know?

• Agriculture and related activities engage 42 percent of the Pakistan workforce.
• Pakistan has a relatively high fertility rate of more than 3 children per woman.
• Pakistan has a very young population: The median age is 20 years. About half of the population are younger than 20 years; only 4 percent are older than 65. (Photo: Reuters)

7. Bangladesh

Population: 156,050,883

Percentage of World Population: 2.3

Did you know?

• The country's name derives from the linguistic and ethnic group "Bengali". Ninety-eight per cent of Bangladesh's population are Bengali.
• Thirty-six percent of the population survives on a per capita income below one dollar a day.
• Bangladesh has a very low literacy rate: Only 48 percent of the population older than 15 can read and write.

8. Nigeria

Population: 148,093,000

Percentage of World Population: 2.2

Did you know?

• Nigeria has a high population growth rate of 2 percent. About one out of every four Africans is Nigerian.
• Life expectancy in Nigeria is 47 years, the median age is 19 years.
• There are more than 250 ethnic groups and 510 living languages in Nigeria.

9. Russia

Population: 141,824,280

Percentage of World Population: 2.1

Did you know?

• Russia ranks 9th in terms of population, but is the largest country by land size with about 17 million square kilometers (6,592,800 sq mi).
• Marriage rates increased from 6,2 marriages per 1,000 people in the year 2000 to 8,9 marriages per 1,000 people in 2007. t Russia has the biggest gap between male and female life expectancy: While females live 73 years on average, males live only about 59 years. (Photo: Reuters)

10. Japan

Population: 127,078,679

Percentage of World Population: 1.9

Did you know?

• Japan has a high population density. On average, Japan counts 337 people per square kilometer.
• The average life expectancy in Japan is 82 years, one of the highest in the world. Currently, there are over 35,000 people in Japan who are older than 100.
• Due to low fertility rates, Japan's population could drop to 100 million by 2050; by 2100, this number could fall to 64 million.

 This sequel to Paul Ehrlich's 1968 landmark bestseller The Population Bomb examines the critical choices we face today and proposes an agenda for the 1990s to avoid global ecocide.

The Population Explosion vividly describes how the Earth's population, growing by 95 million people a year, is rapidly depleting the planet's resources, resulting in famine, global warming, acid rain, and other major problems. Paul and Anne Ehrlich also clearly and concisely point to immediate action that will lessen the threat of ruin and begin to build a more peaceful, sane, and secure world.

A SLOW START

One of the toughest things for a population biologist to reconcile is the contrast between his or her recognition that civilization is in imminent serious jeopardy and the modest level of concern that population issues generate among the public and even among elected officials.

Much of the reason for this discrepancy lies in the slow development of the problem. People aren't scared because they evolved biologically and culturally to respond to short-term "fires" and to tune out long-term "trends" over which they had no control. Only if we do what doesn't come naturally -- if we determinedly focus on what seem to be gradual or nearly imperceptible changes -- can the outlines of our predicament be perceived clearly enough to be frightening.

Our own species, Homo sapiens, evolved a few hundred thousand years ago. Some ten thousand years ago, when agriculture was invented, probably no more than five million people inhabited Earth -- fewer than now live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Even at the time of Christ, two thousand years ago, the entire human population was roughly the size of the population of the United States today; by 1650 there were only 500 million people and in 1850 only a little over a billion. Since there are now well past 5 billion people, the vast majority of the population explosion has taken place in less than a tenth of one percent of the history of Homo sapiens.

This is a remarkable change in the abundance of a single species. After an unhurried pace of growth over most of our history, the expansion of the population accelerated during the Industrial Revolution and really shot up after 1950. Since the mid-century, the human population has been growing at annual rates ranging from about 1.7 to 2.1 percent per year, doubling in forty years or less. Some groups have grown significantly faster; the population of the African nation of Kenya was estimated to be increasing by over 4 percent annually during the 1980s -- a rate that if continued would double the nation's population in only seventeen years. That rate did continue for over a decade and only recently has shown slight signs of slowing. Meanwhile, other nations, such as those of northern Europe, have grown much more slowly in recent decades.

But even the highest growth rates are still slow-motion changes compared to events we easily notice and react to. A car swerving at us on the highway is avoided by actions taking a few seconds. The Alaskan oil spill caused great public indignation but faded from the media and the consciousness of most people in a few months. America's participation in World War II spanned less than four years. During the last four years, even Kenya's population grew by only about 16 percent--a change hardly perceptible locally, let alone from a distance. In four years, the world population expands only a little more than 7 percent. Who could notice that? Precipitous as the population explosion has been in historical terms, it is occurring at a snail's pace in an individual's perception. It is not an event, it is a trend that must be analyzed in order for its significance to be appreciated.

EXPONENTIAL GROWTH

The time it takes a population to double in size is a dramatic way to picture rates of population growth, one that most of us can understand more readily than percentage growth rates. Human populations have often grown in a pattern described as "exponential." Exponential growth occurs in bank accounts when interest is left to accumulate and earns interest. Exponential growth occurs in populations because children, the analog of interest, remain in the population and themselves have children.

A key feature of exponential growth is that it often seems to start slowly and finish fast. A classic example used to illustrate this is the pondweed that doubles each day the amount of pond surface covered and is projected to cover the entire pond in thirty days. The question is, how much of the pond will be covered in twenty-nine days? The answer, of course, is that just half of the pond will be covered in twenty-nine days. The weed will then double once more and cover the entire pond the next day. As this example indicates, exponential growth contains the potential for big surprises.

The limits to human population growth are more difficult to perceive than those restricting the pond weed's growth. Nonetheless, like the pondweed, human populations grow in a pattern that is essentially exponential, so we must be alert to the treacherous properties of that sort of growth. The key point to remember is that a long history of exponential growth in no way implies a long future of exponential growth. What begins in slow motion may eventually overwhelm us in a flash.

The last decade or two has seen a slight slackening in the human population growth rate -- a slackening that has been prematurely heralded as an "end to the population explosion." The slowdown has been only from a peak annual growth rate of perhaps 2.1 percent in the early 1960s to about 1.8 percent in 1990. To put this change in perspective, the population's doubling time has been extended from thirty-three years to thirty-nine. Indeed, the world population did double in the thirty-seven years from 1950 to 1987. But even if birth rates continue to fall, the world population will continue to expand (assuming that death rates don't rise), although at a slowly slackening rate, for about another century. Demographers think that growth will not end before the population has reached 10 billion or more.

So, even though birth rates have declined somewhat, Homo sapiens is a long way from ending its population explosion or avoiding its consequences. In fact, the biggest jump, from 5 to 10 billion in well under a century, is still ahead. But this does not mean that growth couldn't be ended sooner, with much smaller population size, if we -- all of the world's nations -- made up our minds to do it. The trouble is, many of the world's leaders and perhaps most of the world's people still don't believe that there are compelling reasons to do so. They are even less aware that if humanity fails to act, nature may end the population explosion for us -- in very unpleasant ways -- well before 10 billion is reached.

Those unpleasant ways are beginning to be perceptible. Humanity in the 1990s will be confronted by more and more intransigent environmental problems, global problems dwarfing those that worried us in the late 1960s. Perhaps the most serious is that of global warming, a problem caused in large part by population growth and overpopulation. It is not clear whether the severe drought in North America, the Soviet Union, and China in 1988 was the result of the slowly rising surface temperature of Earth, but it is precisely the kind of event that climatological models predict as more and more likely with continued global warming. In addition to more frequent and more severe crop failures, projected consequences of the warming include coastal flooding, desertification, the creation of as many as 300 million environmental refugees, alteration of patterns of dis-ease, water shortages, general stress on natural ecosystems, and synergistic interactions among all these factors.

Continued population growth and the drive for development in already badly overpopulated poor nations will make it exceedingly difficult to slow the greenhouse warming -- and impossible to stop or reverse it -- in this generation at least. And, even if the warming should miraculously not occur, contrary to accepted projections, human numbers are on a collision course with massive famines anyway.

MAKING THE POPULATION CONNECTION

Global warming, acid rain, depletion of the ozone layer, vulnerability to epidemics, and exhaustion of soils and groundwater are all, as we shall see, related to population size. They are also clear and present dangers to the persistence of civilization. Crop failures due to global warming alone might result in the premature deaths of a billion or more people in the next few decades, and the AIDS epidemic could slaughter hundreds of millions. Together these would constitute a harsh "population control" program provided by nature in the face of humanity's refusal to put into place a gentler program of its own. We shouldn't delude ourselves: the population explosion will come to an end before very long. The only remaining question is whether it will be halted through the humane method of birth control, or by nature wiping out the surplus. We realize that religious and cultural opposition to birth control exists throughout the world, but we believe that people simply don't understand the choice that such opposition implies. Today, anyone opposing birth control is unknowingly voting to have the human population size controlled by a massive increase in early deaths.

Of course, the environmental crisis isn't caused just by expanding human numbers. Burgeoning consumption among the rich and increasing dependence on ecologically unsound technologies to supply that consumption also play major parts. This allows some environmentalists to dodge the population issue by emphasizing the problem of malign technologies. And social commentators can avoid commenting on the problem of too many people by focusing on the serious maldistribution of affluence.

But scientists studying humanity's deepening predicament recognize that a major factor contributing to it is rapidly worsening overpopulation. The Club of Earth, a group whose members all belong to both the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, released a statement in September 1988 that said in part: Arresting global population growth should be second in importance only to avoiding nuclear war on humanity's agenda. Overpopulation and rapid population growth are intimately connected with most aspects of the current human predicament, including rapid depletion of nonrenewable resources, deterioration of the environment (including rapid climate change), and increasing international tensions.

But even in that narrow context, the assertion is wrong. Suppose food was distributed equally. If everyone in the world ate as Americans do, less than half the present world population could be fed on the record harvests of 1985 and 1986.

Of course, everyone doesn't have to eat like Americans.

About a third of the world's grain harvest -- the staples of the human feeding base -- is fed to animals to produce eggs, milk, and meat for American-style diets. Wouldn't feeding that grain directly to people solve the problem? If everyone were willing to eat an essentially vegetarian diet, that additional grain would allow perhaps a billion more people to be fed with 1986 production.

Would such radical changes solve the world food problem? Only in the very short term. An additional billion people are slated to be with us by the end of the century. Moreover, by the late 1980s, humanity already seemed to be encountering trouble maintaining the production levels of the mid-1980s, let alone keeping up with population growth. The world grain harvest in 1988 was some 10 percent below that of 1986. And there is little sign that the rich are about to give up eating animal products.

So there is no reasonable way that the hunger problem can be called "only" one of distribution, even though redistribution of food resources would greatly alleviate hunger today. Unfortunately, an important truth, that mal-distribution is a cause of hunger now, has been used as a way to avoid a more important truth -- that overpopulation is critical today and may well make the distribution question moot tomorrow.

The food problem, however, attracts little immediate concern among well-fed Americans, who have no reason to be aware of its severity or extent. But other evidence that could make everyone face up to the seriousness of the population dilemma is now all around us since problems to which overpopulation and population growth make major contributions are worsening at a rapid rate. They often appear on the evening news, although the population connection is almost never made.

Consider the television pictures of barges loaded with garbage wandering like The Flying Dutchman across the seas, and news stories about "no room at the dump." They are showing the results of the interaction between too many affluent people and the environmentally destructive technologies that support that affluence. Growing opportunities to swim in a mixture of sewage and medical debris off American beaches can be traced to the same source. Starving people in sub-Saharan Africa are victims of drought, defective agricultural policies, and overpopulation of both people and domestic animals -- with warfare often dealing the final blow. All of the above are symptoms of humanity's massive and growing negative impact on Earth's life-support systems.

RECOGNIZING THE POPULATION PROBLEM

The average person, even the average scientist, seldom makes the connection between such seemingly disparate events and the population problem, and thus remains unworried. To a degree, this failure to put the pieces together is due to a taboo against frank discussion of the population crisis in many quarters, a taboo generated partly by pressures from the Catholic hierarchy and partly by other groups who are afraid that dealing with population is-sues will produce socially damaging results.

Many people on the political left are concerned that focusing on overpopulation will divert attention from crucial problems of social justice (which certainly need to be addressed in addition to the population problem). Often those on the political right fear that dealing with overpopulation will encourage abortion (it need not) or that halting growth will severely damage the economy (it could, if not handled properly). And people of varied political persuasions who are unfamiliar with the magnitude of the population problem believe in a variety of farfetched technological fixes -- such as colonizing outer space -- that they think will allow the need for regulating the size of the human population to be avoided forever.

Even the National Academy of Sciences avoided mentioning controlling human numbers in its advice to President Bush on how to deal with global environmental change. Although Academy members who are familiar with the issue are well aware of the critical population component of that change, it was feared that all of the Academy's advice would be ignored if recommendations were included about a subject taboo in the Bush administration. That strategy might have been correct, considering Bush's expressed views on abortion and considering the administration's weak appointments in many environmentally sensitive positions. After all, the Office of Management and Budget even tried to suppress an expert evaluation of the potential seriousness of global warming by altering the congressional testimony of a top NASA scientist, James Hansen, to conform with the administration's less urgent view of the problem.

All of us naturally lean toward the taboo against dealing with population growth. The roots of our aversion to limiting the size of the human population are as deep and pervasive as the roots of human sexual behavior. Through billions of years of evolution, our reproducing other members of your population was the name of the game. It is the very basis of natural selection, the driving force of the evolutionary process. Nonetheless, the taboo must be uprooted and discarded.

OVERCOMING THE TABOO

There is no more time to waste; in fact, there wasn't in 1968 when The Population Bomb was published. Human inaction has already condemned hundreds of millions more people to premature deaths from hunger and disease. The population connection must be made in the public mind. Action to end the population explosion humanely and start a gradual population decline must become a top item on the human agenda: the human birth rate must be lowered to slightly below the human death rate as soon as possible. There still may be time to limit the scope of the impending catastrophe, but not much time. Ending the population ex-plosion by controlling births is necessarily a slow process. Only nature's cruel way of solving the problem is likely to be swift.

Of course, if we do wake up and succeed in controlling our population size, that will still leave us with all the other thorny problems to solve. Limiting human numbers will not alone end warfare, environmental deterioration, poverty, racism, religious prejudice, or sexism; it will just buy us the opportunity to do so. As the old saying goes, whatever your cause, it's a lost cause without population control.

America and other rich nations have a clear choice today. They can continue to ignore the population problem and their own massive contributions to it. Then they will be trapped in a downward spiral that may well lead to the end of civilization in a few decades. More frequent droughts, more damaged crops and famines, more dying forests, more smog, more international conflicts, more epidemics, more gridlock, more drugs, more crime, more sewage swimming, and other extreme unpleasantness will mark our course. It is a route already traveled by too many of our less fortunate fellow human beings.

Or we can change our collective minds and take the measures necessary to lower global birth rates dramatically. People can learn to treat growth as cancer like the disease it is and move toward a sustainable society. The rich can make helping the poor an urgent goal, instead of seeking more wealth and useless military advantage over one another. Then humanity might have a chance to manage all those other seemingly intractable problems. It is a challenging prospect, but at least it will give our species a shot at creating a decent future for itself. More immediately and concretely, taking action now will give our children and their children the possibility of decent lives.

All too often, overpopulation is thought of simply as crowding: too many people in a given area, too high a population density. For instance, the deputy editor in chief of Forbes magazine pointed out recently, in connection with a plea for more population growth in the United States: "If all the people from China and India lived in the continental U.S. (excluding Alaska), this country would still have a smaller population density than England, Holland, or Belgium."

The appropriate response is "So what?" Density is generally irrelevant to questions of overpopulation. For instance, if brute density were the criterion, one would have to conclude that Africa is "underpopulated," because it has only 55 people per square mile, while Europe (excluding the USSR) has 261 and Japan 857. A more sophisticated measure would take into consideration the amount of Africa not covered by desert or "impenetrable" forests. This more habitable portion is just a little over half the continent's area, giving an effective population density of 117 per square mile. That's still only about a fifth of that in the United Kingdom. Even by 2020, Africa's effective density is projected to grow to only about that of France today (266), and few people would consider France excessively crowded or overpopulated.

When people think of crowded countries, they usually contemplate places like the Netherlands (1,031 per square mile), Taiwan (1,604), or Hong Kong (14,218). Even those don't necessarily signal overpopulation--after all, the Dutch seem to be thriving, and doesn't Hong Kong have a booming economy and fancy hotels? In short, if density were the standard of overpopulation, few nations (and certainly not Earth itself) would be likely to be considered overpopulated in the near future. The error, we repeat, lies in trying to define overpopulation in terms of density; it has long been recognized that density per se means very little.

The key to understanding overpopulation is not population density but the number of people in an area relative to its resources and the capacity of the environment to sustain human activities; that is, to the area's carrying capacity. When is an area overpopulated? When its population can't be maintained without rapidly depleting nonrenewable resources (or converting renewable resources into nonrenewable ones) and without degrading the capacity of the environment to support the population. In short, if the long-term carrying capacity of an area is clearly being degraded by its current human occupants, that area is overpopulated.

By this standard, the entire planet and virtually every nation are already vastly overpopulated. Africa is overpopulated now because, among other indications, its soils and forests are rapidly being depleted and that implies that its carrying capacity for human beings will be lower in the future than it is now. The United States is overpopulated because it is depleting its soil and water resources and contributing mightily to the destruction of global environmental systems. Europe, Japan, the Soviet Union, and other rich nations are over-populated because of their massive contributions to the carbon dioxide build-up in the atmosphere, among many other reasons. Almost all the rich nations are overpopulated because they are rapidly drawing down stocks of resources around the world. They don't live solely on the land in their own nations.... they are spending their capital with no thought for the future.

This "carrying capacity" definition of overpopulation is the one used in this book. It is important to understand that under this definition a condition of over-population might be corrected with no change in the number of people. For instance, the impact of today's 665 million Africans on their resources and environment theoretically might be reduced to the point where the continent would no longer be overpopulated. To see whether this would be possible, population growth would have to be stopped . . .

Similarly, dramatic changes in American lifestyle might suffice to end overpopulation in the United States without a large population reduction.

The iconic face of India in Japan is former Indian Ambassador to Japan Mr Aftab Seth who is playing the role of a catalyst to bridge the gap between unexplored land of opportunity for the Indian Gen-Next. Mr Seth highlights the tremendous depth of Japanese core strength that is yet to be tapped in India Higher education. Here are some of the most fascinating excerpts of his interview with Opinion Express associate editor Dr Rahul Misra.

Q Japan higher education system has been close knit hence globally people are unaware of its merits, kindly enlighten us about the cost factor, and Work culture of Japanese Universities?

A. From the time of the Meiji restoration in 1868 the Japanese university system was opened to the world. As the first university was Keio, set up in 1858, 10 years university was Keio, set up in 1858, 10 years before the restoration, it was deeply influenced by knowledge acquired by the founder Yukichi Fukuzawa from the Dutch in Nagasaki in Kyushu. As other universities were set up in 1870s by the Imperial government they depended greatly on professors from the west, USA Britain and for medicine from Germany. Till the early 60s all medical students had to learn German because of the text books. It is thus not quite accurate to call the Japanese university system closed. It became like this later, but the early years were of openness.

So much so, that Tenshin Okakura an art historian and friend of Tagore, was able to write a book on Japanese tea in English and a play the “Silver Fox” in English directly.

The xenophobia and hostility towards foreign influences was a product of the military dominated politics of the 20s and 30s and during the war till 1945. Under the American occupation from 1945 to 1952 all institutions including educational ones underwent reform to purge ideas which smacked of the Fascist interwar years. Universities were again open to foreign influence and to student exchanges.

This trend continues to grow.Japanese universities as a general rule offer high class education at a price which is less than private universities in the USA. State universities in Japan tend to be reasonable compared to top private ones like Keio or Waseda founded by Okuma Shigenobu in 1888.

Q. Japan is center of great cutting edge technologies, R&D labs etc. It is associated with several hi-tech products and services yet its Universities are not internationally known brands, why?

A. The reason that Universities in Japan are less well known abroad is because of several factors. Japanese universities may not be known in India or the west but in China and the South East they have been well known since 1895 when Japan defeated China and in 1905 defeated Imperial Russia.

Several leading Chinese intellectuals like Sun Yat Sen studied in Japan and were influenced by Japanese ideas. Nationalist leaders of Vietnam struggling against French colonial rule established in the 1880s were deeply inspired by the Russo Japanese war. Phan Boi Chau one such leader traveled to Japan seeking help. Leaders such as Okuma and Inukai gave help by inviting 100 young Vietnamese boys to study at Japanese universities. Japanese technology has been known even before the war in East Asia. Korea a colony of Japan from 1910 to 1945 also had many generations of students who were educated in Japan. It is correct that top places like the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo University, Keio University with excellent R&D faculties are not well known abroad.

Q. English language is a deterrent to study in Japan?

A The English language has been a deterrent so far. But this is changing. The Japanese have a complex about their inability to master alien tongues. Slowly but surely this changing and Japanese are acquiring huge skills in learning English language.

Q. 4. Group 30 Universities from Japan recently established an office in India to attract Indian students to Japan, why this initiative is taken at this time? What road map and benefits shall be made to Indian students intending to go to overseas destinations with this initiative?

A. The G-30 initiative by PM Fukuda in 2008 is aimed at increasing the number of foreign students in Japan from the present 130000 to 300000 by 2012. The Ritsumeikan office established in October 2010 at the Japan Foundation building is part of this initiative. Waseda has an office in Vietnam and other Universities have been given responsibility for other territories.

As part of this work we helped the G30 in January 2011 to invite students from top schools in Delhi and other cities to attend a seminar addressed by the representatives of leading Japanese universities. I inaugurated this seminar. The purpose is to attract young talent to study in Japan. The benefit Indian students would derive from such study are explained at such seminars. To make it easier some universities like Keio have started English medium classes at the Fujisawa campus which teaches all high tech subjects such as IT, Energy, environmental science and others. Keio has a separate initiative GIGA which aims to attract bright youth to study at the undergraduate level. Post graduate schools in many leading universities have been conducting their classes in English for some years now. This is a trend that is growing.

Q. Any synergies that are possible between private universities between India and Japan with this Group 30 University consortium?

A. PM Abe in 2007 organised the first University Vice Chancellors conference in Delhi to bring together leaders of 12 top universities in both countries. The conference which I attended, as the international adviser to Keio which was the Japanese Co Chairman with the UGC Chairman on the Indian side, led to Keio signing MOUs with 11 top Indian universities including 5 IITs. The synergy between our institutions was well demonstrated by this event.

-BY OPINION EXPRESS