November 2008 Edition
Free up Kosi to make the land fertile
Civil Society News
New Delhi
IN a majestic release of bottled-up fury, the Kosi has swept across half of Bihar. The river has gone back to a course it once followed many years ago, inundating roadways and farmlands and leaving an estimated three million people homeless. None of the manmade structures meant to tame the river has been of any use.
Embankments have been washed away and a barrage higher up in Nepal has done little to contain the mad rush of water. Floods in Bihar because of the Kosi have been a recurring headline. Each year as the river thunders down from the Himalayas on its way to the sea, it causes some measure of disruption. With a similar regularity, embankments meant to create artificial channels and direct the flow of the river take a beating and are reconstructed.
Contractors make huge sums of money through such civil works. The flood business, funded by government relief, is on the whole worth thousands of crores of rupees. (See Flood Business in Bihar, Civil Society, August 2005.) This year, however, has been very different. In changing its course, the Kosi has moved some 290 km, which is roughly the distance between Jaipur and Delhi. Its sweep is quite unfathomable for civil engineers and government bureaucrats. But ecologists are not surprised. The Kosi has simply broken free of manmade barriers and returned to its old home in the floodplains. Ecologists are saying instead of trying to artificially control the mighty Kosi with barrages and embankments, let the river flow free. Don't make the mistake of forcing it back into its former path.
Relocate people temporarily and resettle them around the river, once its waters settle down. They point out that over the past 250 years the Kosi has traditionally shifted its course across 160 kilometres. The reason is that the Kosi has an important task to fulfil which engineers are not allowing it to do. It has always been a land-building river serving a terrain criss-crossed by smaller rivers and water bodies. It keeps filling depressions and low lying areas with silt. Job done, it shifts to new terrain. As the Kosi roamed free in the past, it deposited its silt more evenly, actually enriching the soil, instead of suffocating it with pile-ups. The river carries so much silt and descends from the Himalayas at such high speeds that it is unrealistic to want to tame it with dams and barrages and then use embankments to channel the flow.
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| Umesh Anand |
AMID the concern over recession and collapse of the stock market, we have lost track of a disaster that has an equally serious message for all of us. The decision of the Kosi to breach its embankments and change course by a whopping 200 plus kilometres has left some three million people homeless and thousands in need of medical care. Floods in Bihar have been an ongoing story. But a river deciding to change course so decisively has other implications.
For decades now attempts have been made to tame the Kosi with embankments in North Bihar and a barrage in the upper reaches. It hasn't worked because the Kosi carries so much silt with it as it descends from the Himalayas that embankments, a barrage and other such impediments do not stand much of a chance. They get choked and each year there have been floods of one kind or the other. People of these areas live in a watery hell. But the embankments have stayed because administrators are wary of innovating. Embankments have also become a source of income for Bihar's politicians. Huge sums are spent on repairing them and so on. (See Flood Business, Civil Society , August 2005).
This year, by changing course, the Kosi has delivered the message that rivers, like the rest of nature, have a calendar and clock of their own. All development needs to respect and draw upon this. The development that we see on the flood plains of rivers elsewhere in the country, including for the Commonwealth Games along the Yamuna in Delhi, similarly invites disaster.
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Manthan
Awards push
ICT’s frontiers
once more
Shreyasi Singh
New Delhi
HERS is a journey beyond the ordinary. At 48,
Ritu Biyani Joseph is a breast cancer survivor
and a dental surgeon by profession. But it isn't
her battle with cancer that makes her stand out. It's
her incredible journey post the disease that is pure
courage and true grit.
In an inspiring expedition in 2006, Ritu and her
then 14-year-old daughter, Tista, drove through
30,220 km in 177 days across the four tips of India
and some of the highest motorable roads in the
world to conduct over 140 breast, cervix and oral
cancer awareness workshops. They named their
mission Project HIGH>>>WAYS. For Ritu, the
project was the perfect marriage between her passion
for adventure sports and her commitment to
raise cancer awareness.
Through the journey, Pune-based Ritu and Tista reached out to more than 26,000 people in places almost impossible to get to, and as far off from one another as Koteshwar in Kutch and Kibithu in Arunachal Pradesh. Many workshops were held under the skies or in the shade of trees with the help of translators. Over 80 per cent of these sessions were organised or planned en route as stories of her brave journey travelled from village to village. Vandana Natu, another breast cancer survivor, also travelled with them. But, Ritu drove the entire distance herself. She even held a breast cancer awareness camp at Siachen, known as the highest battlefield in the world. And, she did 3,000 of those kilometres co mpletely solo through which, "I could sing out loud with the windows rolled up," says she.
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Shreyasi Singh
New Delhi
IN Hebrew, the name Samuel means 'asked of God'. Delhi-based Virendra and Tripta Mani couldn't have chosen a more perfect name for their son. Thirty two-year-old Samuel is truly special. He might have been born with multiple disabilities, among them the debilitating cerebral palsy, but that's done nothing to erode his spirit. He uses a wheelchair for mobility, but his thoughts aren't handicapped and his choice of words reflects the confidence and drive of any young urban Indian today.
Samuel owns and runs Neutron Computers out of a small office in South Delhi's Arjun Nagar area. His company assembles, equips and installs computer systems. Sam, as he is fondly called by friends and family, started business in November 2000 with a working capital of Rs 20,000 borrowed from his parents. He was frustrated but determined after spending close to two years looking for a job.
The first few years were rough, but Sam hung on. Slowly, clients trickled in, many of them NGOs. But, it still wasn't easy. In 2006, his parents advised him to shut shop. Thankfully, he resisted and in August 2006, Microsoft got in touch with him.
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Milindo Chakrabarti
AT a time when the whole world is looking for an effective model of good governance, it was really a pleasant surprise to come across a document from South Africa entitled, State of the Public Service Report 2008, published by the Public Service Commission of South Africa. It was further encouraging to know that this document is being published annually since the last seven years.
The present report takes stock of the nature of transformation in public services that took place between 2004 and 2007. It looks at the key transformation priorities set for public service in 2004, assesses the progress made and identifies the challenges ahead. Public services in South Africa are governed by nine Constitutional values and principles of public administration. They are:
● A high standard of professional ethics must be maintained.
● Efficient, economic and effective use of resources must be promoted.
● Public administration must be development oriented.
● Services must be provided impartially, fairly, equitably and without bias.
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Civil Society News
New Delhi
GREEN buildings eat, drink and spend less. Societies that worry about their resources encourage their architects and construction companies to be conservationist. India has a rich tradition of ecologically sensitive construction. The problem is that it hasn't carried into modern times. Rapidly changing urban spaces in India are teeming battlefields in which there is scant concern for the environment. The Indian Green Buildings Congress (IGBC) has been trying to encourage a change in priorities. It faces the challenge of sensitising builders even as the backlog in infrastructure presents a huge business opportunity.
The concerns are many. Builders worry about green priorities pushing up the price of construction. There is also the absence of a supply chain. Where do all those fittings and materials that conform to ecologically sound standards come from? There are also issues of regulation and certification. Right now we have a handful of consultants in the country. It is one thing to have codes put forward by the IGBC and quite another to have them tied into a national priority. The government needs to create incentives for green buildings all the way down to the personal houses that people build.
So the IGBC has its hands full. It needs to sensitise professionals and win support from the government. Civil Society spoke to Sharukh Mistry, whose own firm in Bangalore, Mistry Architects, is famous for its green standards, about the IGBC's priorities.
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