Come to think of it, citing an eighteen year age gap as uncommon between siblings reeks of an urban mindset. In the sprawling countryside of this overpopulated land of the free, there is no dearth of families where generations span two decades or more, so that cousins, aunts and nephews come in all ages, and indeed shapes and sizes. I had not been acutely aware of that fact until recently, when my third-generation-graduate skull was punched through by a grim observation from a very self-effacing professor. His story, albeit narrated in a lighter vein, left me dwelling on the subject. Said the man, “I was the seventeenth of as many kids, and growing up I could never be entirely sure as to what order the oldest four were in age.”

Turns out that this man, now heading a prestigious department, only gathered the courage to ask his oldest siblings what their ages were after he’d finished his PhD. A couple of generations ago, that’s probably what it took to make it in academia, unless you were born a trust fund baby. Street smarts. You need those to get ahead in life with a family where remembering the names of all your brothers and sisters by the time you enter primary school is no mean achievement.

Tuning into the playground chatter around me, I looked around at the smarts on display here. One kid had mastered all the rides, and was acting benevolence itself towards a shy newcomer. She soon had the smaller new kid picking up the jungle gym, nipping along the monkey bars, and losing fear of the roundabout. But there was a mean streak operating somewhere in her lithe little body, as my infant sister’s plaintive cries bore evidence to. She had been ditched in the middle of some domestic game in the sandpit. But she had no shortage of gumption either, and was soon determinedly plugging away at the swing and seesaw, while one of the older kids called out to her, inviting her back into the fold.

These exchanges, it became apparent on close study, bore a marked resemblance to tendencies that are in evidence in patterns of increasing complexity in grown-up life. How ironic, I mused, that it took a quiet evening like this one for me to zone out sufficiently from my obsession with adult business to reconnect with what constitutes my more earthy side. Suddenly I was smothered with demands from a number of waist-high heads, and escorted over to a ride to execute a prized, functional purpose. “Push, push!” they yelled, and push I did. After a while I ambled a stone-throw away, lying down on my own patch of grass and gazing out to the hills in the distance, below the darkening sky. A decade ago this would have been “my turf”, whether guarding a goalpost or waiting for a leather ball to come ripping through the air at me.

It isn’t like that any more. As high school boys, we used to wonder about seniors who had been school legends as athletes, revisiting school a couple of years into university life with the beginnings of beer bellies. To laugh when they said it was such a joy to see lush green fields again, to be tearing up and down the basketball court, in wonder that it could ever be otherwise after school. I entered university determined not to end up that way. It didn’t take much conscious effort, having grown up spending every evening sweating it out in the open. Even so, for the first couple of years I found myself the exception, waking up at the crack of dawn on a weekend, putting in the laps at our beautiful stadium, overlooking a forest.

Nothing lasts forever, good habits least of all, and nightlife took over eventually. The call of concerts and theatricals in plush auditoria sure beat doing push-ups on a humid evening, and downing a couple of beers at our usual pub was a good way of catching sporting action – on television. I remember stopping head-banging while the DJ was belting it out, and turning around just in time to catch that chest-thumping hundred-metre sprint at the Olympics the night that Usain Bolt arrived. Some pieces fell in place, and the irony of it all suddenly hit home. I’d been sticking to weekend jogs in the countryside to keep my legs from going waste, but that was hardly the same as being the fastest gun at university.

It simply isn’t that easy, though. Exam season finds you sitting in front of a computer, scanning through papers endlessly, sitting at a desk scribbling madly, grabbing sleep at any odd hour. Everyone around is running on a student bio-cycle. There’s lots to do and never quite enough time to do all of it in. “Work expands to fill the time allotted to it”, as some wisecrack once said. Back in primary school, I wasn’t a nerd but liked getting my work done first up so I could get down to the serious business of playing. But that winner habit had gradually taken the backseat, and waking up later rather than sooner seemed the done thing. Bucking the trend is just another way of falling in line, after initial resistance.

As my kid sister and I walked home, the moon rising from in between the rolling hills all around us, I thought of William Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies’. Kids can be much crueller than us sometimes, because they’re transparent. We go about our evil in carefully measured, sophisticated ways. The subtlety of our deceit is half its addiction. But it’s ourselves we’re deceiving.

A couple of days later, I was watching an early Tom Hanks film. I’ve been a Hanks buff ever since I was old enough to appreciate Forrest Gump, even though some might say I was born a decade too late to be a real fan of his. Be that as it may, ‘Big’ is the film with which he made it to the big time – the first of those ‘outsider’ roles that have been his forte ever since. A kid in the body of a grown-up. Boy, is it easy to mess up a cliché like that, unless you are one smooth director. In this case, I found myself enthralled, as Hanks brought alive all the joys that go with kids, but in the form of a successful adult. Here is a big-shot at a toy firm, content to be simple, able to laugh with that innocence we all lose, sooner or later. And the gorgeous woman in the office is touched by that enough to see through the fake show-off Hanks has for a competitive colleague. Enough to jump on a trampoline with him in her party dress, and all the rest of the jazz that happens in the movies.

But there is something that hit home like a Bolt as I watched Big. The fact that we’re all of us being propelled into becoming lords of the files. Spouting statistics, making a big deal of the inane work our routine workdays involve, faking it. Only for a while, we think, and forget to smile, and stop being open. Payday is the new monthly special, weekends our regular reprieve, and the occasional holiday the equivalent of an annual excursion. For me at school, this meant a trek in the Himalayas, or a trip through the backwaters of Kerala. In an American context, prom night might be more of a highlight. But the bottom-line is the same.

I sat up on my hilltop today as the sun set, gazing steadily out at the countryside as the river below changed colour. There was a breeze blowing, and the last rays in my eye reminded me of a day some years ago, as a high school sweetheart and I sat on a sunny rock, stuck in a moment of forever. That forever didn’t continue, but I had forgotten for a while now that it never ceased to exist. It is – as Bono so aptly puts it – stuck in a moment. In chasing after things I don’t need and a life I don’t wish to live, I’ve been fooling myself that I’ve retained the freedom to do exactly what I want. The truth?

The truth is that the only way to do what you want is to just do it, as Lord Nike observed. Of course it isn’t possible to do it exactly the way you want, to begin with, but whoever said a thing is only worth it if it comes easy? In the doing of it, there is magic. As happened with me out on that hilltop this evening. A weight lifted. I had stopped being lord of the flies only to become lord of the files, and this ship was capsizing. Until it decided to keep right on sailing. As that Rage song puts it, in no uncertain terms, “I won’t do what you tell me!” I won’t even do what I tell myself I ‘should’ do. I’ll simply do what I know from within I must, because that is what needs doing.

The night lends them its cool

Desolated and forsaken they lie;

Tanned but still numb freezing hands

Tools that have mastered every tool

Will work another day to help me by…

To help me live or to help me die?

-

I roam around to remote lands

They know now I am no fool

And need my help, my skillful hand and eye;

They call my height malfunctioned glands

(Kids pay for me to do tricks as a rule

And the extra buck does help to get me by)…

To help me live or to help me die?

-

I lay down with my blanket below

And gaze into the black-blue sky

As if the swirling mists would now reply

-

The silence that follows seems to know

An answer which I am supposed to give

Will I die or do I yearn to live?

-

Soon the sun will rise and drive

Away the cold comfort of night

Space infinite as far as goes my sight

-

And bravely once more I will strive

To live up to the call of fate

Until I think again some evening late:

-

If I were to die tonight

In total freedom where I might

Be spotted come the morning light

Or ever be lost to human sight,

-

Where the sun is free to scorch me

And the sands to slowly torch me

The night air chill to lie upon me

And all else to die upon me,

-

Would this body be much changed

Or would it be just rearranged

As stone which once was soil before

Dead plant matter that was much more?

-

In each living being are

The bodies of its own past selves

In each each particle of each star

One book containing all the shelves.

-

So should I live or should I die

Is not a question any more

For it is a much bigger I

Than I had suspected before.

-

All else now gone the truth remains

And as such tells me but one thing:

Before from flying it refrains

The hummingbird must still its wing.

-

And as I muse away the last

Of what has been a pleasant ponder

I am surprised the night is past

The sun stops infinity yonder.

-

So up on my feet all eight feet of me

And bundle on back I trudge as before

To where by logic I am already

To pick up some talk and then think some more.

With the learning to emerge from the dialogue on the 15^th, Week Two in Hyderabad reached its natural conclusion. On Sunday, we board our flight to Tirupati for a week of action research. The feeling is of having gone through an immense process of learning over the course of this fortnight, and an urge to put it together. We’ll work at this during the final week in Delhi, culminating in a presentation. Now to outline the methodological framework:

This is envisioned as a set of concentric circles. The innermost is made up of knowledge pathways, including new technical solutions, institutional forms, planning concepts and models, as well as social engineering, collective bargaining and participatory governance. This is contained within a bigger circle that involves stakeholder analysis. This considers the roles of civil society, institutions, science, businesses, implementation agencies and governance forms.

The next bigger circle looks at implementation problems, such as the lack of interface management, lack of communication and education, various obstacles, conflicts, corruption and, partially, tradition. The outermost circle is sustainable development, concerned with accountability, sustainable planning and communication and the implementation of new concepts. In addition to this there are external factors. The external risks include climate change impact, global economy, and global versus regional consideration. Positives are global environmental governance and global networks of checks and balances.

Thus we proceed from knowledge via stakeholder analysis to sort our way through implementation problems so as to attain sustainable development, mindful of external factors. Staying alive to this picture, we now move on to the leading questions for urban sustainability, the theme my group has worked on this past week and more.

• How do climate change aspects and water management politics impact urban planning?
• Who responsibility is it to implement water management, waste management, energy and mobility?
• What has happened to the 74^th Amendment and institutions of self-governance?
• Are there any promising future models?
• What are the solutions, in terms of pathways, best practices and suggestions?

The resource persons consisted of Dr Suneel Pandey from TERI, Dr Ravi Anand from JNTU, Mr Raghu Babu from GTZ, Ms Jasveen Jairath from CEE, Mr Prasada Rao (again) from EPTRI, Prof Ashwani Kumar from CEPT, and representatives of the Tarnaka Welfare Association.

With respect to the impact of climate change aspects and water management politics on urban planning, a number of issues were raised. Lifestyle choices play a determining role, and rising population and demand increase pressure. The issue of migration and the attitude of urban planning towards taking them into account must be considered. The feasibility of RE forms is crucial, and systems thinking must be utilized. For instance, as traditional water management systems are made defunct by alterations to local topography, water management politics need to be integrated into urban planning in a way that ensures equity and efficiency in conservation, delivery and access. During the dialogue, a huge variety of responses and standpoints came up.

The counter-intuitive first challenge for urban planning is to lower water supply standards to the bare minimum acceptable, rather than aiming at what has become an unfeasible 135 litres a day of drinking quality water. No existing model incorporates this understanding. The impact of urban planning on the energy sector due to multi-stage pumping and the like ties in with climate change impacts and can be drastically reduced through optimization efforts in conjunction with a paradigm shift in approach, which is case specific. Costing and user charges of water supply need to be rationalized, since the worrying current trend is to subsidize urban against non-urban users.

The lack of capacity among Urban Local Bodies (ULBs), lack of funding powers being transferred despite responsibility for planning and implementation resting with them, and political vision and commitment are problem areas. Urban development reforms must ensure separate local level election and financial commissions. Permitting FDI and liberalized private sector activities 1991 onwards has been an enabler of sorts, but must be used to achieve aims such as one-third forest cover in urban areas.

With half the Indian population projected as being urban in the future, intra-city water distribution must be safeguarded for equity, and small, localized water bodies used to the extent possible. This would help cut GHG emissions, 8% of which are caused by water pumping. Leach pits, septic tanks and other outdated techniques are used for wastewater disposal due to the lack of underground drainage systems in many areas. Faulty governance structures and the systematic outgrowing on the part of urban planning and development can be destructive in this way, contaminating ground water and threatening health. Gravity flow in water supply rather than the current widespread practice of pumping it in from distant areas for urban use must be planned for, rather than adopting an energy intensive, crisis management approach. The lack of usage data leads to inequitable water supply, and public sector dysfunction paves the way for private sector profits on a common resource, or denial of basic rights. Public utilities need better management, which is possible with much less effort than privatizing water, if the fact that the public sector is slower to respond than the private sector is accounted for and addressed.

On-site recycling (extreme decentralization in terms of household level environmental billing) of limited per capita treated water supply is the future. This needs widespread dissemination of technology, possible given strong political will. The politics of technology are interesting themselves, with financial allocation often being elitist rather than effective, illustrated by the simple lack of fund allocation for water pipe repairs, a small but essential detail. The dearth of repair service professional, with plumbers, cobblers and minor electricians not regarded highly, is indicative of social decay, which can only lead to inefficiency and rundown systems.

Municipal corporations and development authorities would do well to take a leaf out of the book of advanced planning in ancient civilizations, since they currently seem to lack emphasis on provision of drinking water, treatment of groundwater and sewage waste even within their own areas being developed. Even the basic principles are not mentioned in policy, and unsustainable practices ensue. The role of RWAs, especially in low-income neighbourhoods and on behalf of slum dwellers, is crucial in pressuring for citizen oriented changes, such as for migrants. Regional planning and livelihood issues also need attention alongside city planning.

Coming to the next leading question, that of whose responsibility it is to implement water and waste management, energy and mobility, a number of associated questions were looked at. These dealt with lifestyle issues, attention to detail (leakages, decay), the need for water auditing, the role of women in solid waste management (SWM), and monitoring mechanisms. Integrated urban sanitation programs, assessment of social impacts, and the need for a stakeholder coordination mechanism were emphasized, with the importance of bottom-up approaches in general and top-down mechanisms in specific cases being mentioned.

There are design solutions but also cultural aspects to consider in waste management. PPP models are often a way for private firms to arm-twist the public sector. This goes back to the tragedy of not only the commons but all open-access systems, and not everything can be left to individual interests. Of course, the next phrases that come to mind are collective action and social accountability. In the case of SWM, corporate agencies are taking over, invited in red-carpet mode by helpless municipalities and cashing in on profit possibilities, aligning their interests with profit rather than the responsibility, naturally. True, the public sector is sluggish compared to private operators, but this must be woven into the analysis of which development model to adopt, using game theoretic models to avoid elite capture.

In SWM, an example is the corporate agency compacting recycled waste into energy cakes and selling them to boiler factories as fuel feed, without adequate safeguards against this potentially being even more polluting. In terms of transport, this is even more obvious. Intermediate Public Transport (IPT) vehicles serve as very useful feeder systems provided by self-employed operators, such as shared autos. But government policies are ridiculously biased against them thanks to a powerful lobby that promotes expensive GPS-equipped cabs. Unified transport authorities, though instituted, have not really come into their own, and they must play an enabling role for IPT. For waste water discharge, a zero waste water discharge policy for large-sized institutions is coming in. This must demand adequate capacity installation of cleaning systems within the same area.

When it comes to the policy perspective, solid waste handling and management rules that demand zero waste are simply not feasible for profit, with private operators preferring other investments, and expecting grand incentives from heavy tipping to provision of vast quantities of disposal land. No operator is willing to take over public authorities’ manpower, which is inefficient and problematic, and the reasons for inefficiency and unsustainable practices remain unaddressed. A study places the size of SWM in India at perhaps Rs. 55,000 crore. Such unexploited potential not being dealt with sensibly except in those instances where the private sector manages to capture profits while externalizing costs by damaging the environment needs to be examined.

Inefficiencies in the domain of urban infrastructure and services must be removed from the public sector, and the question is how. Top-down approaches can enable quick effective action in times when capable officials handle the reins, but this is not sustainable, falling to pieces with their transfer. Regardless, there is always need for a bottom-up process to be followed in formulating policies and decision-making. Hence, the importance of knowledge empowerment for citizens in order to enable participation and information flow dynamics cannot be overstressed. From the political perspective, it is imperative to utilize dedicated politicians and officials within local constituencies. RWAs, as discussed, must network horizontally and secure the interests of low-income areas. The question of representation is directly involved in this aspect. On the question of inter-ward equity, programs such as ENVIS and Ward Infra Structure Assessment (WISA) must be explored. The municipality must be made to publish in readily accessible ways the details of plans and operations on a regular basis in a proactive manner.

The leading question pertaining to the 74^th Amendment took up this question of forms of representation, as also the gender perspective, equity concerns, implementation issues and the importance of capacity building. This means a continued but different role for the higher level government bodies, in order to enable effective participation and local functioning. Linked with this is the provision of more than rudimentary standards to qualify for elections, and the important issue of evolving a code of conduct for common governance. This is a process of defining responsibility, and involves the proceedings of communication as also locally specific allocation and distribution of responsibilities.

The problem with the 74^th Amendment is that, historically, it has been rare for a person to hand over power on a platter save under duress. But this is what is demanded of higher level government bodies with respect to their local counterparts. There is a need for struggle and constructive engagement. There is no room for romanticizing about the have-nots as poor innocents, for they would not necessarily be any different in terms of furthering their vested interests at others’ expense than the current haves, given a chance at power. The problem is one of accountability and transparency, and a bottom-up approach is to popularize knowledge on how to analyze a municipal budget, raise awareness about the processes of governance and the decisions taken, so as to clarify the real deciding factors.

At one level higher of abstraction, it is a case of economic and political forces leading social and cultural forces in terms of making changes. The optimistic hope was expressed that this might change with the current recession! But consider that pretty much every municipal corporation in the country is dependent on the government for funding, and works merely as its bureaucratic extension. Financial independence is what will give autonomy and breathe life into the 74^th Amendment. At present, planning and implementation responsibilities are handed down, without corresponding financial autonomy.

Finally, coming to the leading question on promising future models, there are several issues to consider in the light of the exhaustive discussion above. A relatively unexplored facet is the integration of tribal spaces within cities, in terms of special land rights for indigenous populations that wish to live in cities. The tribal land rights act has not extended, at least in practice, to urban areas. Infrastructure must be provided for public spaces that afford non-hierarchical migrant representation. Besides urban land policy and tribal public spaces, the broader question of aligning policies on tribals with a realization of their intent rather than letting them remain a mere mock-up for lip service to principles of human rights bears looking into. The integration of peripheral urban areas and satellite towns in development plans is important to consider. Climate change adaptive and mitigating reforms, and pros and cons of supply and demand driven models for water and electric supply also merit attention, as also regulation practices in conjunction with a green economy approach. The question of ‘how’ to bring about change and apply pressure for guiding the dynamics of the process is an important one. Disaster risk management and preparedness captures many aspects any model needs to incorporate, and the integration of migrants into urban planning through methods such as involvement in local politics is an interesting concept to consider. Housing provision for contract labour during and post-construction, and the role of ecological budgeting and accounting systems that factor in environmental cost externalization, is a way forward.

The lack of an integrated urban and regional planning policy in India and the impact this has must be kept in mind. The revenue and planning departments lack coordination. An example on addressing the information gap would be the Transport Oriented Development Policy (TODP). A study shows research and planning as the most passive of factors, whereas vested interests are the most active contributor to orientating development!

Various questions remain partially addressed. In the context of risk management, how can development dynamics be taken into consideration in planning so as to avoid conflict within approaches? The differentiated roles of various stakeholders in different sectors, such as that of the Ministry of Urban Development in industrial disaster management, are crucial to identify and build on in this regard.

On the issue of migration, the phenomenon of Tata in Jamshedpur was considered. The real challenge becomes clearer, however, when studying the numbers. Chicago, with an annual population growth rate of 6% during its occupation of the fastest urbanizing centre, registered an absolute increase of 1.3 million. On the other hand, , Mumbai experienced 4% annual population growth between 1975 and 2000, which translates into 11.2 million in absolute terms – a completely different order! This underscores the completely different and ridiculously difficult issue of migration in the context of urbanization in India.

On the question of tribal public spaces, it must be considered that it is not so much a question of urban planning as a deep-rooted, direct political clash of power. Green economy can be successful if it is properly embedded in its local setting. India is no stranger to the concept of new urbanism, with practices largely being of mixed land use, pedestrian access development and an attempt to cut dependency on automobiles – human-scale design, basically. However, this is hardly the case in the major urban centres, and the example that captures this most obviously is the number of flyovers being constructed. These are nothing but a way of siphoning off public money into private hands. Finally, the issue and forms of representation raises the question – who is deciding, and for whom? The lack of visibility of public health clinics, PDS shops and the like, which should be prominently present within each neighbourhood, must be addressed. This is the most indicative of missing attention to detail, no matching of implementation with stated intent, and low political will. Intelligently crafted policies that identify and assign responsibilities to the most appropriate stakeholders can break this deadlock. Otherwise private interests will naturally prevail over a chaotic public sector that misuses funds and provides insufficient, inefficient services. Policies that address equity and inclusiveness issues while envisioning a clear path to actual implementation without leaving room for ambiguity are the order of the day. Else planning will continue to be driven by an organized industrial lobby prioritized over the voiceless agonizing hundreds of millions.

In closing, the concept of sustainability was interestingly juxtaposed with that of survivability. For the have-nots, who are the majority, this is more crucial at present, and approaches to development must emphasize this aspect. The starting example of lowering water standards to the bare minimum acceptable captures this brilliantly. A given, dependable amount of water that one can be equipped to handle carefully individually is preferable to no water or unpredictable quality. Unfortunately, development has never been looked at this way, tying together the context of sustainability and prevalent ground realities. A model based on a premise of this nature would need support systems such as organizing citizens at multiple levels. And the role of knowledge is key in this, if strong communities are to be developed at the local level. Programs such as ENVIS and WISA can empower data collection and analysis by directly affected stakeholders and elected representatives, which makes it easier to design models within which it is possible for sustainability to survive. This is the only way to forge ahead without periodically being at the mercy of IFIs like the World Bank and ADB for determining the way ahead. In this manner, India can eventually become an empowered world citizen, and play a contributory role in development pathways rather than seeking out direction and chancing its luck on a trial and error approach.

the latest addition to the family in varanasi!

There’s no greater bundle of joy, furrier ball of energy, efficient demolisher of footwear, giver of tingling licks, enthusiastic wagger of tail, surprising pink in black, wooer of unwitting hearts, lover of any game, chaser of moving things, paw shaker of hands, master of hungry looks, finisher of unread newspapers, sleeper of hot afternoons, subject of intense adoration, slurper of things edible, hopper of car interiors, explorer of simply everything, effortless conqueror of cuteness, wader of wild waters, devout spectator of meals, expectant companion of adventurers, quite like a black labrador puppy.

Meet Woofer!

The panellists consisted of Dr Sreelakshmi from TERI, Dr DC Sharma from RAMKY, Mr Prasada Rao from EPTRI, Dr Alice Kagoda from Makerere University, Uganda, Dr Krishna Reddy and Dr Priyanie Amerasinghe from the International Water Management Institute. The session began with the question of how WRM is influenced by climate change impacts. A couple of responses are of interest. One is that the baseline scenario projects a business as usual (BAU) analysis across 30 years, as practiced by UNDP. It has taken up four sectors under adaptation and mitigation strategies – education, health, forestation and water. Investment in these will be done across 20 developing countries impacted by climate change. As for the Indian government, there is the watershed management programme and also water-related activities under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). The National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) includes water as one of its eight missions, adopting both supply-side and demand-side measures for adaptation. Chennai is the only example of a city where both recycling and auditing mechanisms are in place, and this needs to be widely promoted.

The Ugandan example of flooding due to actions by Ethiopia, Sudan and Kenya brings into focus cross-border problems. Uganda and Brazil provide instances of successful Public-Public Partnerships (PuPs), which are antithetical to PPPs, and also enable public utility partnership with communities, technical, managerial and financial support across utilities, and community management and ownership of water delivery systems. The question of the role technology and investment have to play is an important one.

The outcomes from this dialogue included the issues of collective responsibility, institutional frameworks, multi-stakeholder forums and the role of international dialogue. The need for coordination between scientists and policymakers, issues concerned with implementation, the role of decentralization, taxation relief measures, user charge related issues and incentivizing in various ways was emphasized. The importance of monitoring and assessment mechanisms as well as research and data collection was mentioned, and social engineering at the ground level stressed upon. Broadly, this points at the need for knowledge at the policy and implementation level.

The questions next looked at were what comes in the way of the transfer of best practices, and why projects initially run on external funding often turn out to not be sustainable. Towards answering these, the critical role of soft factors (such as charismatic leaders, who are communicative geniuses and almost invariably hail from within the community) and trust was underscored. It was acknowledged that investment might be most effective in areas where soft factors already exist. Some international programs make the mistake of trying to find shortcuts to what is essentially a long process, consequently not embedding it within its social setting, which leads to its disintegration once the role of a foreign agency stops.

The final solutions to emerge were in terms of pathways, best practices and suggestions. The discussion still fell short of outlining a comprehensive model for how to address the issues that came up, but a rough and ready roadmap would include the constitutive elements that follow. There is a need for inter-institutional dialogue, capacity building of community-base projects, awareness in rural areas, women empowerment and a gender perspective, agrarian investment, for corruption to be addressed, evaluation and implementation of case studies, and area-specific traditional knowledge to be utilized. Patience and an approach that is willing to take its time often bears fruit in a more worthwhile manner, and issues of ownership and stakeholder responsibility must be taken into consideration. Overlapping must be avoided while bridging gaps, and a hybrid of traditional and modern concepts used. Local planning is key, but at the same time it is the government that has the responsibility of guaranteeing a platform.

The leading questions asked whether one was contributing to or degrading the environment at an individual and institutional level, whether growth and lowered carbon emissions could be reconciled with a green economy, what the role of clean development mechanism and agro-fuels could be and how knowledge could be built on climate issues.

The opening statement was the latest point raised by a World Bank stating that poverty eradication could not occur in India without a resultant 3.5 times increase from 2007 emission levels by 2031 following business-as-usual (BAU), which could be minimized to 2.7 times at best. In response, the panel gave an overview of activities of their home institutions. This included comments on the feasibility of advanced technology, the need for awareness and capacity building with respect to CDM, the revenue potential for municipal composting as part of solid waste management, the need to downscale climate change impact studies to the district level in order to better policy, the decentralized use of renewable energy (RE), the role of networks and the triple bottom-line of people, planet and profit. Several specific topics were explored and the suggestions that came up are selectively documented below.

Mechanisms for segregating waste to be implemented from the top official down to people’s participation must be identified rather than left to the chance interest of a bureaucrat. In the context of CDM, technology dumping must be prevented and leapfrogging must be enabled. In developing nations, decentralized rural technological changes have a relatively smaller role than mass urban changes. Developed nations are not using only the latest technologies in an integrated manner due to policy loopholes and these need to be addressed. CDM must be prevented from becoming a way of sidestepping problems at home in favour of cheap ways out abroad.

Bio-fuels, rather than being a transport solution, run the danger of being cropped in fertile lands, and this problem can be circumvented by using them as decentralized rural fuels for micro-grid electricity or small motor operation by farmers, but this runs counter to practices that favour corporate interests in general. Potential problems with carbon credits need to be ironed out in order to safeguard against their unintended misuse. Problem areas include carbon emission reduction (CERs) trading only in certain regulated areas, the lack of laws commoditizing CERs, the lack of small-scale equity investment available, and certain accounting limitations and a weak legal regulatory environment in the context of implementation. While voluntary mechanisms are in place, regulatory and market mechanisms sometimes seem to be confuted and this is troublesome for accountability. Bundling mechanisms for farmers through special purpose vehicles (SPVs) and a carbon tax are of interest as well.

The topic of global environmental governance was brought up and discussed at length. The role of UNFCCC and State governments, the question of scale and representation, and within this accountability, ‘subsidiarity’ and good communication practices were discussed. How well or otherwise Agenda 21 is implemented is a good indicator of how much these are functional, and it is seen that only a handful of the 190+ UN member-signatories are achieving anything similar in practice. This signals decay. A set of “bouncing elements” was developed in this context, which interlink with each other. Politics, local governance, planning, policies, the built environment, energy management in RE and transport, gender, the absence of an up-to-date concept of urbanism, all contribute to the lack of a transnational network that links up with global environmental governance. Why this is so was discussed.

The solutions emerging included the need for a long-term perspective for sustainable development, the importance of building and sharing knowledge, of raising awareness through education, and of learning from both best and worst practices. Lifestyle choices were looked into, and a connection between traditional and technical knowledge seen as desirable, as well as effective translation of knowledge. Local and global participation, the creation of networks, capacity building, interlinking departments working on environmental issues, the conjoined promotion of IT as well as ET (environmental technology) and the utilization of green technology across levels complete the solutions that came up.

I will never cross paths with a complementary self.

Each joyous occasion of the day, night makes into ache, of habit

Missing the company that embraces as it understands.

The truth is I do not understand, I know all too well the labour

Men substitute in their lives for love, so compelled

Without choice, that gradually the hope in the heart recedes. Dreams

Fade more than linger and slowly stop being born.

When I was a lad love visited me, showed me how concern and despair

Are the face and flip side of a chance coin.

Keep tossing, it said, then left, and this changed to tossing and turning

Trying to find some meaning hidden in randomness.

There is no meaning in these years alone, Without a love, why a room of one’s own?

Solitude often hides in cover dense, But loneliness uncovers man’s pretense.

and by night to the passions whose display it reprimands

then there is little that is common twixt the two of us

and while you drive to work i think that you have missed the bus.

yet though we know that standards differ between you and me

i never interfere with the way you choose to be

but when you take away from me what was not mine to give

you rob the earth and trample over my freedom to live.

i’ve learnt respect is mutual, that it has to be earned

but rights must be demanded before all the land is burnt

the wells are poisoned or dried up, only your greed still flows

and barefoot miles for food and drink our sons and daughters go.

of callousness made vicious, a circle can have no end

save if you take responsibility to make amends.

that what gives me the greatest strength and ease,

is the uneven chunk (hand-broken off)

of home-made choco-walnut cake.

and what’s more, when in celebration,

or in a state of great elation,

life and i are much at peace

and all the more so for a piece (hand-broken off)

of walnut cake that’s chocolaty.

and when i’m writing late at night,

or feeling lonely – but a bite

of dry or gooey, uneven slices,

full of walnutty surprises,

does delight.

The two parks we were concerned with are Industrial Park (IP) Nacharam and IP Mallapur, spanning 280 hectares and 87 ha respectively. These are pilot projects of GTZ and APIIC (Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation). The Environment Protection Cell (EPC) is one of three functional components within each of these IPs. The other two are the infrastructure management cell and the finance and administration cell. Indwa Technologies Pvt. Ltd. has been given a private contract to manage the EMC.

Of the many officials contacted by GTZ, one high-up made an enthusiastic appearance, and acquainted us with the facts. The number of industrial units with legal approval within the two IPs is 601, whereas the actual number in operation is 681. Details about production, waste and water generation and disposal are available for considerably less of these units, and are often not required below a specified plant size. 69 environment-sensitive units are authorized by the Pollution Control Board (PCB), though the EMC has identified 83 within the orange/red classification (needing permission).

Waste water treatment is done using two effluent treatment plants as per CFO requirements. Municipal waste is disposed of in roadside bins, from where clearance happens on a contract basis. Hazardous waste is partly taken care of using a toxic sewage disposal facility and partly through illegal dumping, as the EMC has documented.

A gradual decrease in the total dissolved solids (TDS) in air and water has been observed since these operations began less than two years ago. This has been monitored using five observation points within each IP, as well as a set of five in Raj Cheruvu, the nearby lake. An 8 MLD (million litres a day) capacity effluent treatment plant has been proposed, and the first 2 MLD pilot for this is under construction very close by Raj Cheruvu. We visited this, unlike the other group that went to ICRISAT and saw three presentations without any chance of field visits.

This Common Effluent Treatment Plant (CETP) comes under Eco-Profit, or ECOlogical PROject For Integrated environmental Technology. Within its scope, the two IPs use Nalla Cheruvu for disposal of low total dissolved solids (LTDS) but require treatment of HTDS (heavy) prior to disposal. The CETP makes effluents undergo treatment at three levels: a primary physical process for oil and grease removal using a screen and brick chamber, secondary treatment using a flash mixer and flocculation for liquid-solid separation, providing aeration and increased surface area for biological action, and tertiary treatment using a pressured sand filter and activated carbon.

EMC offers a variety of services: environmental quality monitoring, developing and maintaining a data bank of industrial activity, current initiation of emergency preparedness, environment infrastructure management, training and support services to industries, including help on application procedures for approval purposes. The finance and administration cell takes care of taxation, information, data bank management and estate management and planning coordination, while the infrastructure management cell handles roads, electricity, water and security.

Interesting points that emerged include the lack of government schemes incentivizing instalment of environmental protection measures, except some stray examples in street lighting and solar energy applications. No guidelines are in place from the PCB, only the extreme measure of shutting down units by cutting off power supply due to violations (this sort of notice more often than not gets a stay order in court). This is a black-and-white approach when a grey solution is needed to establish a workable dynamic we can move ahead with. In this regard, a GTZ initiative is ‘Climate Proof’, which audits all GTZ projects in order to ensure integration with all climate safeguards.

The final point to emerge was the emphasized need for an interface with universities to address complex interrelated environmental concerns through not only laboratory consulting and environmental impact assessment (EIA) assignment but also by building student capacity, such as having interns from JNTU working with the EMC.