April 2009 Edition
How Bhuvana Kannan revived farms steeped in salt after the tsunami.
Rina Mukherji
Poompuhar (Tamil Nadu)
WHEN the tsunami struck the coast of Tamil Nadu four years ago, the
village of Poompuhar in Sirkali taluk of Nagapattinam district was one of
the worst affected. As the first wave swamped this fishing village, built on
the remains of the ancient Chola capital of Poompuhar, 128 bodies were
washed ashore. Houses collapsed in the face of the ocean's mad wrath. Hapless
villagers ran inland to save their lives. The lashing waves swept over miles of
farmland, turning these fields saline.
When the waves withdrew, more than death stalked the coastline. With
livelihoods and homes gone, Nagapattinam was a land of the living dead. But
thanks to the efforts of two women, after four years, the farms are beginning
to be productive once again. Canals of a traditional irrigation system have
been de-silted and farmers who had been shattered by the tsunami now have
hope for their landholdings.
Manimekhalai, 52, then the president of Poompuhar panchayat and Bhuvaneshwari Kannan, 39, an agricultural expert, stepped in promptly. Manimekhalai was a dynamic and much admired local leader. Bhuvana, as Bhuvaneshwari is popularly called, is a post-graduate in agriculture with specialisation in plant genetics. She had shifted to Maiyaladuthurai after her marriage. After a short stint as research associate, Bhuvana was keen to work with the community and pass on her expertise to farmers in the Kaveripoompatinam- Poompuhar area.
With Manimekhalai's help, Bhuvana began to familiarize herself with villages under Poompuhar panchayat's purview. Just a day after she had arrived, while she was moving around getting to know the topography of the area, the tsunami happened. "There was utter chaos as people ran helter skelter from villages along the Cauvery towards the town," recalls Bhuvana.
Also Read : The devoted leader
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Hazards Centre does
two studies and finds
that the govt’s plans
under JNNURM are
more talk than reality.
Civil Society News
New Delhi
A national mission to make investments in 63
Indian cities over seven years has run half its
course, but there are concerns about how
projects are being chosen and whether all the
money and effort will finally deliver an improved
and inclusive urban environment.
The Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) was launched in 2005 shortly after the Congress-led United Progress Alliance (UPA) came to power. It was supposed to make investments in infrastructure and basic services for the urban poor.
The idea was to help cities solve their problems quickly by providing funds, reducing red tape and introducing new efficiencies through public-private partnerships. Local bodies were to have a key role and projects were to be judged on inclusiveness. Consultation, broad-based and in the public domain, was to be given importance so that investments flowed to where they were needed most.
However, preliminary findings of two studies undertaken by the Delhi-based Hazards Centre in various cities indicate quite the opposite: We are told there is inadequate consultation and lack of awareness about projects at the local level. There is also a mishmash of data and an absence of vision for cities.
Read More...
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Umesh Anand
CITIES are meant to be levellers and drivers of opportunities and growth.
But our cities are mainly known for their inequalities and inefficiencies.
While a few Indians enjoy urban facilities, in some cases equal to the
best in the world, tens of millions of others continue to live in appalling
conditions. Such disparity makes it necessary to raise questions about our
democracy and the real depth of our economy. If so many people do not have
access to basic amenities, what good is the progress that we claim?
The Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), launched about four years ago, was meant to deal with the backlog in our cities by providing funds and vision and establishing public-private partnerships. But if the Hazards Centre, a feisty little outfit located in Delhi, is to be believed, not all is well with the JNNURM.
You can read about the Hazards Centre's findings in this issue, and there will be replies from the government for sure, but the question before us is whether we can afford to continue to merely tinker with the problems of our cities.
Real solutions are required. And they are available For instance the task force on affordable housing for all headed by Deepak Parekh of HDFC has made several suggestions with regard to increasing the urban land stock and directly addressing the issue of housing and civic amenities for the poor.
Read More...
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And near Mumbai a developer gives homes for Rs 2.1 lakhs
Civil Society News
New Delhi
FAR from the debris of the downturn, a very different real estate market is taking shape. Developers have begun seeing business sense in building cheaper and affordable homes for people with small incomes. With the bubble of rising real estate prices having burst, even some of the bigger companies are looking at the small home buyer, realising that this is where opportunity really lies.
The Ansals are putting Rs 400 crores into such housing in the north and others in their league elsewhere in the country are on the same track.
But it is to the innovators in affordable housing that the day really belongs. They have the advantage of being first-movers, cutting costs and providing access to finance to a broad base of buyers desperate to own shelter. For instance, Matheran Realty Pvt Ltd is offering homes beginning from as little as Rs 2.1 lakhs in the hinterland of Mumbai.
Even as this happens, an important task force of the Union government headed by Deepak Parekh, chairman of HDFC, has stressed that affordable housing should be seen as a core economic activity and placed at the centre of public policy.
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Himanshu Thakkar
THE Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) is in the news again for the wrong reasons, as usual. This time the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Limited (SSNNL) is trying to go back on its promises to the very investors who put their money in the project when it was facing its strongest opposition from all quarters.
The story starts in 1993 when the World Bank decided to withdraw itself from the project following loss of its credibility. Then, the Gujarat government's SSNNL floated the deep discount bonds (DDBs). It promised a return of Rs 1.11 lakh after 20 years on an investment of Rs 3600. The Nigam issued over 7.14 lakh bonds in January 1994, collecting about Rs 260 crores. Around 6.69 lakh bonds remained outstanding when the current process of redemption started in November 2008. As per the DDB prospectus, the Nigam had no option to call the bonds for payment before maturity, though the bond holders had that option at various stages.
Gujarat Finance Minister Vajubhai Vala, while presenting the interim budget in the State Assembly on February 18 this year, admitted that the deficit in 2008-09 was much higher due to the prepayment of DDBs of the SSNNL for which the government had earmarked Rs 2,720 crore. Out of this, Vala said, about Rs 1,800 crore had already been disbursed against premature redemption of the bonds. It is not clear why the government earmarked Rs 2720 crores for the DDBs when the requirement was for over Rs 3300 crores.
The SSP has been a huge drain on the resources of the Gujarat government. As the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has noted, the project was cleared without any financial plan. The state government borrowed indiscriminately to push ahead with the project at any cost, but most of the borrowings in the latter years went for servicing the earlier debts. Even as the project got by far the largest funding for any project from the Accelerated Irrigation Benefits Programme in complete violation of the norms of the scheme, the project's financial requirements have become an unbearable burden even for a so called prosperous state.
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Civil Society News
New Delhi
GOOD governance is a frequently used term these days. Nearly every problem from red tape to social evils is traced to the lack of good governance. But ask people who use the term what it means and the answer is invariably incoherent.
For a clearer understanding reach out to The Intelligent Person's Guide
to Good Governance. Its authors are Surendra Munshi, retired Professor
of Sociology from the Indian Institute of Management, (IIM), Kolkata, Biju
Paul Abraham, Professor of Public Policy at IIM and Soma Chaudhuri,
Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology, Michigan State
University.
The book explains the concept of
good governance, international perceptions,
the role of the state and democracy.
There is a whole chapter on civil
society, its relationship with the state
and with good governance. There is
also due emphasis on the Indian experience.
Excerpts from an interview with
Surendra Munshi:
Why is good governance the new buzzword
in development circles?
Good governance became important as
an issue for developing countries from
the late 1980s when two important
international funding organisations,
the World Bank and the IMF, began to
emphasise it. They started paying attention to policy processes in states
for which funding was being considered. This emphasis on these processes
has been traced back by some analysts to the 1980s when two important
governments for the World Bank and the IMF, the Republican administration
of President Ronald Reagan in the United States and the
Conservative government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the
United Kingdom, promoted neo-liberal market-friendly policies both for
their own countries and for others around the world.
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Rita Anand
PERHAPS no other law has grabbed the urban middle class as much as the Right to Information Act. For the first time in 60 years, well off people sought to use a law to improve governance and make themselves accountable as citizens.
By and large, the middle class views most legislation with some distant amusement. Most laws are seen as populist measures thought up by governments for the rural areas which means for the poor somewhere out there. These are schemes the government rashly committed itself to, you will hear people say. Money will be gobbled by corruption. That's how it works, they shrug.
With RTI things have been different. The law more or less met with approval. It didn't pinch middle class pockets and then there was the delicious possibility of getting the recalcitrant bureaucracy to mend its ways.
In reality, RTI bridged the rural-urban divide. The right to information movement originated in villages. In Maharashtra, it was Anna Hazare who demanded transparency and accountability from the government. The bureaucracy are the servants of the people, he asserted, their salaries came from our money. In Rajasthan, Aruna Roy and her group the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) led an energetic movement asking that government files be opened for public scrutiny.
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