Ecology vs. the Economy in India

...But Kerala officials have always been determined to go ahead with it?including the Communists when they briefly replaced the Congress Party a few months ago...

...What confronts the Third World is not simply the control of pollution...

...it is the total management of nature's resources—air, water, land...

...Thanks largely to new types of wheat and rice introduced with American techniques, a record 143 million tons of foodgrains were harvested last year, yet the achievement did not prevent crippling famines...

...Meanwhile, the Bombay Environmental Action Group (BEAG) at first erroneously protested that fumes from the plant—on the mainland across the harbor—would waft over to the metropolis...

...Already the world's 10th or 11th biggest industrial power in terms of GNP, India must raise the living standards of the 47 per cent who are officially acknowledged to be subsisting below the poverty line...

...Apart from location, another factor in Third World development is the choice of technology...

...Swaminathan, once India's top "Green Revolutionary"—are pointing out how elephantine projects have been taking a heavy toll on the environment and, in the final analysis, impoverishing rather than enriching a region...

...Nor is it irrelevant to note that Kerala has 18 additional hydroelectric schemes under consideration, many of them bigger than Silent Valley...

...the refinery can also provide naphtha for the fertilizer needed by the region...

...The supporters of Silent Valley scoff at the opposition for blocking economic progress and putting "monkeys before men"—a reference to protests from biologists about the threat to rare species in the forest...

...Its first two Soviet-style five-year plans, in particular, emphasized rapid industrialization with massive government investment in "public sector" development projects akin to the three new ones...

...DARRYL D'MONTE, a frequent NL con-tributor, is writing a book on envi-ronmental issues in the Third World...

...It is all reminiscent of the way the states clamored for steel mills...

...The private firm refused to build its planned $30 million installation further down the coast, though, because the economic infrastructure did not exist—a classic Catch-22...

...Still, just as India and other poor countries want to catch up with the Joneses of the industrialized world by building nuclear power plants, etc., each state within this vast nation continues to vie for prestigious industries...

...Grain is either unavailable at controlled prices in large areas of the country, or people simply do not have the money to purchase even the barest supplies they need...

...Lately, though, some economists and scientists have been suggesting that massive, long-gestating multipurpose schemes are costlier and less beneficial than more modest plans calling for the participation of their beneficiaries (irrigation is a typical example...

...The southwest monsoon winds unload their moisture when they meet the thickly forested hills...

...At first glance, this would seem a good way to conserve the river while yielding power in a state that has little or no industry...

...THE HIGHLY sophisticated fertilizer plant at Thal-Vaishet, has been plagued by much acrimony, some ecologically-based and some not...

...Both the Mathu-ra refinery and the Thal-Vaishet fertilizer plant can be broadly said to fit in with the Green Revolution strategy of high-technology energy-intensive agriculture...

...the percentage rises to 18 if the value added to industry is computed...

...The landlocked Mathura refinery is not without pollution drawbacks—the sulphur dioxide emissions could turn into acid rain upon contact with moisture and corrode the pristine marble and sandstone structure of the Taj Mahal, which dates back to 1650, as well as other monuments in the vicinity...

...The issues involved in situating the refinery illustrate the choice India faces—development or environment, otherwise referred to as the "ecology or economics" debate...

...The official reason for the location was that the demand area lies inland...

...Until the Maharashtra authorities are able to offer better conditions outside of Bombay, the city will continue to attract investment and the endless hordes of rural poor searching for work...

...And the Kerala State Electricity Board, promoter of the dam, notes that only one-tenth of the 24.7 million acres of dense forest in the valley would be destroyed...

...Upon finding that it was wrong, BEAG altered its anti-pollution stand and quite legitimately opposed the structure's proximity to Bombay when the coast south of this country's commercial nexus is badly in need of development...

...If the scheme is given the green light, it would harness the Kun-tipuzha River, which flows from hills in the southernmost tip of the country down to the sea...

...IN ALL THREE cases there have been heated exchanges about possible alternatives...

...India, it will be recalled, launched a major modernization program shortly after independence in 1947 under the tutelage of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru...

...The second is a fertilizer plant going up at Thal-Vaishet, 13 miles from Bombay, that will be one of the biggest single-site producers of urea anywhere...

...Once this area was denuded, the region would actually receive less rain and thus be further starved of power as a consequence of the developers' shortsightedness...

...The opponents of Silent Valley?whose campaign could still have an impact , because a final decision on executing the project remains to be made?want a coal-fired thermal power station to be built in the plains of Kerala, away from the rain forest...

...And location is determined less by economic factors than by parochial oneups-manship...

...Interestingly, the controversy had a precedent: A private company wanted to put up a fertilizer plant in a new town being built on the mainland to ease the pressure on Bombay, but it was not given permission both out of fear about the pollution it would create and in the hope that it would move to an industrially backward area of the state...

...Some scientists liken the destruction it entails to pricking a balloon with a pin...

...The central problem for the Indian economy is not merely to produce...

...This will provide many more jobs than the 1,500 at Thal-Vaishet itself, and will consequently add to the concentration of national resources in and around greater Bombay...

...This has to bestud-ied closely, for it could cause serious pollution wherever it is situated and Kerala is in any event notoriously short of coal...

...The third is a proposed hydroelectric dam that would submerge 10 per cent of the forest area problem is spillage from tankers and the ensuing damage done to the beaches and birds, while the longer term worries are over the harm done to beachfronts by off-shore drilling rigs (in California, for example) or oil refineries (like that proposed off the New Hampshire coast...

...The states of Punjab and Haryana, and the northwest generally, are where the new high-yielding wheat strains have been introduced...

...What is more, they say, it is certain that rainfall patterns would be affected...

...Instead of the refinery at Mathura, it might well have been wiser to construct coast-based installations...

...Their attitude betrays an ignorance of the fragile interdependence connecting different forms of life...

...The only choice would then be total dependence on exports—a suicidal policy, particularly for the environment, as Brazil's experience shows...

...Although some wildlife advocates have been over-enthusiastic, the fact is that a tropical rain forest is an invaluable natural laboratory for botanists and other scientists...

...As for the Thal-Vaishet plant, it undoubtedly would have been better to place that down the coast from Bombay...

...But open to question is the desirability of making the country dependent on foreign know-how for agricultural complexes, if not on imports of fertilizer itself...

...The pauperization of the peasantry continues at an alarming rate, despite India's consistently rising f ood output...

...Now that the Communist-backed coalition has fallen, it will be interesting to see whether Kerala's Congress leaders can wield sufficient influence with Prime Minister Gandhi in Delhi to push the desired dam through...

...It has been noted, however, that the IOC should have studied whether oil products could not have been more economically transported from coast-based plants: After all, the crude has to be pumped from there in any case...

...Nevertheless, following the Stockholm conference and the subsequent barrage on the subject in the media and in public affairs discussions, India too is slowly becoming aware that it ignores the quality of life only at its own peril...

...This is as much a matter of hard economics as of conscience: Unless these "wretched of the earth" can purchase industrial products after meeting their basic requirements, Indian factories will always lack the domestic markets they need to grow...

...But the oil refinery, (he fertilizer plant and the hydroelectric dam have faced the entire length of this vast nation with the reality that true development can only take place with the preservation of the environment—and certainly not at the expense of it...

...At the rate these forests are vanishing, it would be disastrous to sacrifice a precious resource that could be saved...

...Nonetheless, the project has run into fierce opposition from local and national environmentalists...

...Green Revolution farmers require diesel fuel to run their tractors and irrigation pumps...

...Indeed, the attraction of Thal-Vaishet to Maharashtra State, of which Bombay is the capital, is that in addition to the $100 million ammonia and urea producing installation, private industrialists are expected to sink perhaps twice that sum into a vast compatible petrochemical complex...

...His words aptly sum up the conventional wisdom in India?and, indeed, other Third World countries—regarding the environment...

...The telling question, though, is why the government-run Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) decided to build a refinery in the northwest hinterland, when the crude oil will have to be pumped from the coast 744 miles away...

...the Economy in India BY DARRYL D'MONTE "THE WEALTHY worry about car fumes," quipped an Indian official attending a preparatory meeting for the epoch-making 1972 UN conference on the environment in Stockholm, "we worry about starvation...

...The NCEP, an agency of the central government in Delhi, has clearly ruled against the hydroelectric dam in Silent Valley...

...In India, the dilemma posed by the conflict between industrial expansion and its effects had until now been largely confined to the Indo-Gangetic plain in the north...

...The projected Silent Valley hydroelectric dam appears, by contrast, to be a "least cost" solution as far as location is concerned...

...Ecology is by and large disdained as a Western fad, something the advanced countries want to foist on the less fortunate...

...One is an oil refinery scheduled to open soon in Mathura, just 25 miles away from the Taj Mahal, that threatens to damage India's "miracle in marble"—ranked among the world's foremost tourist attractions...

...In general, the inclination of the Third World is to plunge headlong into ever more grandiose efforts aimed at narrowing the huge gap between its per capita income and that of the advanced societies, and to let the environment take care of itself...

...Moreover, Indian public sector consultants are probably right in maintaining that the best course would have been the development of a group of smaller plants: Using imported technology, Thal-Vaishet will be capable of producing 5,000 tons of urea and 3,000 tons of ammonia daily—an output that in all probability could be reached by using indigenous know-how at the local level...

...Several of the country's leading experts—like B. B. Vohra, former secretary to the Petroleum Ministry in Delhi and now head of the National Committee for Environmental Protection (NCEP), and M.S...

...Basically, there is grave doubt that Indian investment in high-yielding food-grain varieties will ultimately boost output and solve the acute crisis of perennial food shortages...

...Originally an American firm, C. F. Braun, was chosen to construct it...

...Three recent large-scale government projects have focused attention here on the issue...

...Bombay today accounts for 12percentof the industrial jobs in the entirecountry...

...The decision was later vetoed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's government, triggering an international furor and causing the World Bank to withdraw its $250 million loan...