Over the top

Meher Ali on Jairam Ramesh’s apology for the government’s role, 23 years ago, in the clandestine transportation of toxic waste from the Union Carbide plant to a TSD.

Jairam Ramesh, India’s Union minister of state for environment, apologised on Sunday. ‘Whoops!’ he said. The Madhya Pradesh government secretly transported 40 tonnes of toxic waste from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal to a Treatment, Storage and Disposal (TSD) facility in Indore in 2008, at a time when the curfew was imposed on the riot-affected city, the Times of India reported.

What do you say to that? ‘Go Ramesh!’ ‘Champion of transparency!’ ‘Of course you are not to be blamed. We agree, you were not the environment minister at that time, so environment was probably not one of your concerns.’

So what if 23 years ago, the country shook from the impact of the Bhopal gas tragedy. So what if the government that you work for has treated the victims of the tragedy with little more than contempt. So what that the state and central governments have both tried, with all their might, to brush Union Carbide’s role in the environment disaster, under the carpet?

You probably knew about it though didn’t you? For how long?

What happens now? Another Bhopal in the making, because we know it’ll probably take you another 20 years to shift the waste (clandestinely) to some other obscure place, or maybe you’ll wait for a riot to do the trick.

The UPA-II, it seems, is getting more arrogant by the day. Instead of chalking out a clear plan of action for disposing of toxic waste which has been in the country since 1984; instead of holding those responsible for the disaster accountable; instead of using this environmental disaster as a lesson in how to avoid similar tragedies, the government says, ‘Sorry! Whoops!’

Would it have been too much to expect the environment minister to have a plan of action on how he plans to now get rid of the toxic waste in Pithampur accompany his apology? Would it have been too much to ask him to explain how exactly he came to know of this and when? (Of course he would have to tell us the truth, which may be a stretch).

We want to know why the central and state government were working so hard to cover this up, not just in the 1980s but until 2008. We want to know how many Indian citizens’ lives equal that of Warren Anderson? We want to know if the government will take environmental hazards seriously or if it is waiting for another one to happen. When will it chalk out a clear plan of action with regard to compensation for victims of environmental disasters, protocols for cleaning up and emergency responses to such disasters?

We want to know if the government is serious about governance and if it values people over profits. The last point is important, because if it does not, as we have seen in the past; if the government is callous and irresponsible towards its people, if it treats corporations as kings and the people as ‘collateral damage’ in its quest to become a ’superpower,’ then the people may not accept. Whoops!

— The writer is the Assistant Editor (print) at Himal Southasian.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime came up with two interesting points these last few days. The first, startlingly, but none the less quite plausibly was from the bodies head, Antonio Costas, who claimed that drug money may have bailed out banks during the financial melt down, as banks were struggling to find ‘liquidity’ or inter bank loans. Costas claimed that money from drugs may have been absorbed by the banking system to tide them over. Costas claimed in the UK Observer that as much as $352 billion of drug profits were ‘absorbed’ by banks threatened by collapse. If his figures are correct it is not substantially less than the U.S. treasury bail out.

The same organisation also reported on ‘troubling’ developments in Burma where opium cultivation had climbed for a third consecutive year, doubling its cultivation since 2006. Burma is the world’s second largest producer of heroin and illegal opiates after Afghanistan. This comes only a few weeks after it released yearly figures indicating the continued unhindered rise of methamphetamine production in the country with new trade routes opening up to the west into India and beyond. This came despite apparent considerable efforts by international drug agencies, yet UNODC’s Gary Lewis maintained in interview to me that the government of Burma, as many allege, are not working in collusion with drug producers. This is an issue and accusation that has been elaborated by Swedish author and Burma expert Bertil Lintner through decades of research and publication of the very interesting ‘Merchants of Madness’ book. His accusations are that the Burmese junta tolerates and even colludes with allied armed groups in the production of drugs. It is an accusation given credibility by the undiminished nature of the industry in the country and the fiscal failures of virtually all industries in Burma apart from fossil fuel extraction, drugs and people smuggling.

Indeed the illegal drugs industry was hardly impeded by the global economic slowdown, with amphetamines continuing to grow in consumption and production. It is considered to be one of the world’s top five export industries.

So could we now say that not only has the ‘war on drugs’ been lost but the industry, despite being almost entirely in the hands of ‘criminals’, has also saved the global economy? Adding yet another very compelling argument for the legalisaton, regulation and taxation of this lucrative industry. This apparent bank ‘bail out’ give us a window into the tax dollars that the world is losing to the unregulated criminal economy.

Burma is a case in point of an economy where taxation doesn’t follow money or reflect relative wealth and it is also a society where social welfare, education and most sorts of justice are in dire needs, here more than anywhere we can see the need for regulation as markets fund war lords and gangsters as opposed to health care, education and the betterment of society. If Costas is right it is also the collateral in that ‘war’, drug users and the thousands who suffer and perish as a result of its criminal status who have truly paid the price for the bail out.

Joseph Allchin

A leaked report has indicated the practicalities behind the Indian government’s plan to roll out biometric id cards for its 1.2 billion people. The cards could be compulsory; “It may be mandated that at the time of joining school (first standard) it is necessary for children to have a UID or to enrol for one” so that they have: “the ability to track every child“.

The report stresses its benign intentions; helping the poor etc. but as it is confidential has the good grace to acknowledge that; “it cannot ensure that targeted benefit programs reach intended beneficiaries.”

So at the moment we can’t insure that the proverbial good intentions reach the near 50% of children who need more food in India but we should make sure that we take their DNA into the supremely efficient and undendingly benign political system. The mantra the state will use to justify this project will be the same as always; terrorism and to fight poverty. It’s a mantra that is a cliched precursor to state interference, intrusion and crime in this day and age. The problems with id cards and biometric data bases are many and varied but chief amongst them I believe is affording the state more control. A state made up of many many human institutions run by fallible and at times corrupt people.

In the UK they are in the process of building a DNA database which will eventually be compulsory. This has started and the police have been running a DNA database supposedly of criminals. In practice they swab every person they pick up and take their DNA, they do not remove your DNA if you are innocent and they are apparently arresting people merely to get their DNA. Needless to say it has been of questionable use and 3/4’s of black males between the ages of 18-35 are on it, there are also apparently a large number of people called Harry Potter on the data base, indicating the fallibility of the British policemen if nothing more…

Have a read of the report then go and read 1984 by George Orwell and sleep tight…..

photo courtesy of Alex Ellgee, the Irrawaddy

Obama has kept his hand on the hilt, finger on the trigger, sticking with his cow boy predecessor and will not change his policy on the issue of banning of land mines.

This puts him well in their with some of ‘his quintessential partners of the 21st century’, with 3 of the regions biggest militaries also boasting the odious weapons in their arsenals. India, Pakistan and Burma all posses and refuse to stop using the weapons that claim the lives of thousands every year in arbitrary agony.

My experience of them comes from only one of those countries; Burma. Fro m whose war I have witnessed entire wards in a hospital full of young men with limbs and eyes missing, their skin pock marked with shrapnel wounds. Most were bellow the age of 20. Some had been fighting with Burma’s government, the guy in the next bed against. But they were of the same ethnic group, the Karen, who inhabit the rugged, beautiful land along Burma’s eastern border with Thailand.

The shocking aspect of land mine victims was not just the injuries I saw that day, which were horrifying, nor the tender age of most of the victims but the sheer dominance of this one weapon in a single ward. I met one person who was there because someone pulled a trigger. The rest had their lives scarred because they put their foot in the wrong place. It’s arbitrary nature means that civilians are just as likely to get blown up as soldiers.

Why big, sophisticated millitaries like the US, or India need landmines amongst their vast arsenals is debatable, but the use of such weaponry also asks questions of it legitimacy in regards to the Geneva convention. In the case of Burma it has been widely suggested that they are used by the military government as part of its ‘four cuts’ policy in the afore mentioned conflict in Eastern Burma. In  effect this is a scorched earth policy, its aim; to prevent the subsistence of guerillas and to punish local populations. What the Geneva conventions would term ‘Total War’.

In terms of India similar practices will no doubt and possibly have been utilised in battling insurgent movements in Kashmir and the Maoists in the ‘Naxal’/tribal areas of eastern India.

-Joseph Allchin

“This is the first time there has been an open trial against any member of any of India’s intelligence agencies” conferred lawyer and activist Nandita Haksar to me as I peered into the murky case of 34 Burmese nationals being tried in Kolkata at the moment.

The 34 are accused of being ‘gun runners’. They were apparently lured to the Andaman Islands by an Indian intelligence officer named colonel Grewal, who it now appears lives and works in Burma, but not for the Indian government, he works for Burma’s notorious, yet seemingly perpetual military government.

The facts of the case are long and rambled. This is no surprise given that the Burmese were first ambushed on Indian soil about 11 years ago. In the course of the 11 years since their arrival by boat on the aptly named ‘Landfall Island’ some 8 of the Burmese have died or ‘disappeared’, one trial lawyer has died in mysterious circumstances, they have faced at least one intelligence instigated riot involving some 300 other inmates attacking them (apparently to prevent an open trial taking place) and they waited 6 years for a charge sheet to even be produced.

At every step of the way India’s legal system has been plagued by India’s intelligence services. They have failed to comply with legal proceedings, none of its members have appeared in court and it has apparently harassed and followed not only trial lawyers but defense witnesses.  It has the blood of at least 6 Burmese democracy activists on its hands and possibly one courageous Indian lawyer.

What Indian intelligence was doing when it invited the Burmese to the Andamans only to double cross them is not known. What is worrying not just for the Burmese groups fighting that country’s oppressive government, but India as well is that the protagonist who invited them was probably acting on the behest of a foreign power, the Burmese military junta. Most informed sources that I have spoken to believe he was taking money from the Burmese. This does not discount the possibility that he was working in some sought of joint capacity or joint project between the two governments. If so it is a worrying indictment of India’s foreign policy, and one that she will surely be viewed in time with the same sort of guilt that support for the likes of Pinochet elicits in London or Washington. India’s relationship with Burma could fill many a blog post. It is a story ripe with Machiavellian conjecture and geo politics, but for the sake of the here and now the world’s largest democracy seems to be displaying about as much morality as a hyena after a bout of haemorrhoids, towards her eastern neighbour.

The disembodying facts that are appearing in court may be bringing a painful magnifying glass to the institution of military intelligence in India but the fact is, is that none will face justice, and stand the diametric opposite of so many great Indians who were also incarcerated in the Andamans and whose efforts gave rise to that great democracy .

-Joseph Allchin