April 2008 Edition
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Chandrasekhar Hariharan’s BCIL constructs eco-friendly housing in Bangalore
Vidya Viswanathan
Bangalore
Mamata Krishna lives in a sparse, sprawling apartment that would make an environmentalist green with envy. She has a ‘water conscience’ meter. She can switch off her lights using her mobile phone. Hot water comes from solar heaters. Her air-conditioner circulates more fresh air than an ordinary AC. She doesn’t get a big electricity bill. Imagine, she even earns carbon credits living a comfy, green lifestyle. Krishna isn’t an eco-warrior.
She teaches at Bhavya, an alternative school. Her apartment is at T-Zed Homes, a housing complex on six acres off Varathur Road in Bangalore. It has five buildings named Basil, Bay Leaf, Bilva, Begonia and Babool. Krishna lives in Bilva. A white hammock sways in her living space. A plank of re-used wood knocked into a wall, covered with cushions works as a sofa. Furniture? Nah. “I like it this way,” she says of her minimalist, arty decor. T-Zed stands for ‘Zero Emission Development’ and these new age apartments have been built by Biodiversity Conservation India Ltd (BCIL), Asia’s largest green building company.
Some of its construction technologies read like science fiction, though they have their roots in traditional sciences. NGOs have so far flirted with these technologies. BCIL has sought to put them on a commercial platform.
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Umesh Anand
THE construction business has several exciting possibilities. It provides the opportunity to rethink design, size and use new technologies that meet demand but reduce our ecological footprint. This month’s cover story is on a company that has tried to enter the real estate sector with different values.
Chandrasekhar Hariharan’s Biodiversity Conservation of India Ltd (BCIL) has been developing housing in South India that seeks to meet the challenges of water and energy consumption and waste disposal. It has taken all of a decade for Hariharan to find his feet. His projects seek to avoid burdening already stressed urban infrastructure. They bring an alternative set of technologies into currency. With time, wider use and increase in demand, new benchmarks will be set and the technologies will be adopted more freely.
Hariharan used to be a journalist and has worked with NGOs where he was inspired to redefine housing. He was finally compelled to set up a business to achieve his goals because it was easier than dealing with several layers of government to implement a new idea. “There is a goldmine of technologies lying out there waiting to be used,” says Hariharan. The challenge before the government is to show flexibility and foresight in supporting such social entrepreneurship. Incentives are needed to promote technological alternatives.
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Civil Society News
Gurgaon
BEHIND those glitzy malls and soaring apartment blocks in Gurgaon on the border of Delhi lies the hard work of armies of donkeys. They have been out there in the heat and cold every day of the year, carrying bricks and ferrying mud.
You can see them crossing MG Road in single file as shoppers scatter to let them pass and traffic waits impatiently. If you manage to get inside a construction site, you will find them slaving away far below ground level in what will finally be the basement parking lots of the buildings. Travel further south towards the Sona Road, past Gurgaon’s residential colonies of South City and Greenwood City, and donkeys can be seen hard at work at every major site.
They mostly do eight to 10 hour shifts and go without food and water. You will also find donkeys at brick kilns where their condition isespecially bad. Donkeys have no rights, no unions to speak for them. When they drop dead or become too feeble, they are easily replaced. Theirs is cheap labour because a donkey comes for as little as Rs 60 or Rs 70 a day. So, the next time you read about the wealth of Indian real estate barons, remember it was the humble and persistent donkey that helped build some of those flashy fortunes in Gurgaon and other parts of the National Capital Region.
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Civil Society News
New Delhi
CORPORATE social responsibility or CSR has come to be regarded mostly as a farce. Indian companies put a little money into CSR to make themselves look good. It is important for them to be seen as caring. For the record, CEOs pay the usual lip service to development and working for the community. CSR with a nudge and wink has now become commonplace. But what about those ompanies that want to go beyond corporate charade and really make a difference? How do they make CSR work?
The TVS Motor Company makes a significant contribution around its factories in south India through the Srinivasan Services Trust (SST). It is watched over rather passionately by Venu Srinivasan, the TVS chairman.Recently, SST, whose head is Ashoke Joshi, a public spirited former IAS officer, got its work independently assessed for the second time in eight years. This time it called in a team from the Gandhigram Trust, which spent 20 days examining the sustainability of SST’s initiatives at three locations.
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Should a small section of the middle class decide on the plans for Delhi’s future?
Civil Society News
New Delhi
DUNU Roy, grey-haired, jeans-clad director of the Hazards Centre, has been locked in combat with some vocal representatives of resident welfare associations (RWAs) over their right to shape plans for Delhi’s future. The clash has taken place in cyberspace, with furious emails flying back and forth following the Delhi state government’s proposal to give RWAs the right to be consulted on plans, suggest modifications and perhaps even veto those plans that they find inconvenient.
Roy’s view is that RWAs speak at best for a small minority of Delhi’s middle class. In addition, RWAs representing the posh colonies eem to have a disproportionately large say in decisions taken by the government. If they are now allowed to formally sit in judgement on development plans for the city, they will only seek to push through their own elitist preferences. The concerns and needs of the common man would get overlooked.
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Jehangir Rashid
Srinagar
Aworrying trend in Kashmir has been the growth of Post Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD), a mental condition that has been affecting ordinary people. Two decades of political uncertainty and the occurrence of natural disasters are said to be contributory factors.
Dr Arshad Hussain, one of the Kashmir Valley’s leading psychiatrists, says very few people talk about their mental problems since they fear others will consider them insane and therefore an embarrassment. Dr Arshad is a psychiatric consultant at Government Medical College (GMC) Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) hospital and Psychiatric Diseases Hospital, both associated hospitals of GMC, Srinagar. Dr Arshad has been treating people affected by mental disorders since the last seven years. He spoke to Civil Society about PTSD:
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Susheela Nair
Bangalore
YOU feel cool and calm as you enter the gates of the Taj West End hotel in Bangalore. The lush greenery which envelopes you is a soothing contrast to the frenetic traffic outside. Sprawled on 20 acres, the hotel is a sylvan paradise.Trees, birds and water dim the harsh reality of a bustling city. The Taj West End is the flagship hotel of the Taj Group.
There is more than idyllic green space here. The hotel implements practices which have won it the prestigious National Tourism Award for being the best eco-friendly hotel in India. The award recognises the hotel’s efforts to promote eco-friendly initiatives and its commitment to protect, conserve, and restore the natural environment. Taj West End has consistently carried out environment best practices in energy, water conservation and waste management, and control methods for air, water, electricity and sewage treatment. It has succeeded in integrating environment management in all its business operations.
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Aunohita Mojumdar
Kabul
MOHAMMAD Younus sells cigarettes in one of Kabul’s busiest roads in the Deh Afghanan area. It is a good place to do business. Deh Afghanan has a big market and many government offices. Younus came to Kabul from Kandahar three years ago and he now manages to make ends meet. Younus is a street vendor. He does not have access to toilets in offices, shops or hotels.
Since the past few months he has been regularly using a spanking new toilet facility, constructed by Sulabh International and financed with Rs 3 crore in aid from the Indian government. “In winter, 700 to 800 men used the toilets and in summer, around 1200,” says Zainullah, an employee of Kabul municipality who works as caretaker. “Earlier there were no toilet facilities. Now people come regularly. They also come here to perform their ablutions before prayers.” A biogas plant has been installed. The hot water, lighting and cooking fuel it generates is a matter of pride for Zainullah. “We don’t need a generator and we can cook our lunch.
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Adil Jawad Khan
Karachi
FISHERMEN risk life and limb to get their catch. Helping them assert their rights is the indomitable Mohammed Ali Shah, chairperson of the Pakistan Fisher Folk Forum and a member of the fishing community. “We educate fishermen about their rights,” he says. “We tell them about the importance of their vote. Without struggle, nobody can achieve their rights.” The World Forum of Fisher Peoples, an international organisation, has ranked the Pakistan Fisher Folk Forum as the largest and most exemplary in the world.
The Forum has 30,000 members and 130 units. Mohammed Ali Shah has risen from the ranks. His family is from Ibrahim Hydri, a slum on the outskirts of Karachi where most fishermen and their families live. He was born and brought up here and he works for his people. His father was a fisherman who wanted him to study.
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Riaz Quadir
Versailles
AS though to bolster my defence, events in Europe and elsewhere kept cropping up soon after my undiplomatic foray into sacred grounds in my previous column. I speak of my reference to the Jewish question in post-war Europe. A controversy arose in the UK after the shadow Prime Minister, David Cameron had listed the proposed visits of British school children to Poland’s holocaust sites to be funded by the State) as a Labour government ‘gimmick.’ It was, in fact, part of a list of 25 other ‘gimmicks.’ True to my earlier assertion, that the negative word ‘gimmick’ was uttered in the same sentence and remotely linked to the Jewish holocaust, it resulted predictably in fire and brimstone from the usual suspects.
Anyone with a public platform and political ambition; left, right or centre, jumped right in to showcase their own unequivocal stand on the Jewish Question. That they were dragging Cameron’s words completely out of context wasn’t even an issue.
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