THE JURISPRUDENCE OF THE "FAIT ACCOMPLI."

                         [ This piece was published in The Wire on 28. 11.2019 ]

   It takes two to tango, but when the executive and the judiciary decide to tango together it becomes like a tandav, and is certainly not good news for the country. A disturbing feature of governance over the last year or so is the manner in which the legal corrective mechanisms are being rendered impotent by presenting the country with a fait accompli, which in turn the higher judiciary is willing to accept as an alibi for avoiding, or at least deferring, judicial review. In other words the government goes ahead and does what it wants, notwithstanding the dubious legality of its actions, and the judiciary in turn accepts this as the status quo and is therefore reluctant to intervene effectively in the matter. The judicial response to the challenges to the govt's actions kicks in so late that by the time it takes effective notice of the matter the fait accompli is almost set in stone and cannot be reversed. Four recent examples will suffice to make this point.

   The infamous, and clearly venal, electoral bonds were notified in January 2018 and launched in March 2018. They were immediately challenged in the Supreme Court, first by the CPI(M)  in January 2018 and by the election watchdog ADR in September of the same year. Elections to four states were due in 2018 and the general elections to Parliament were slated for May 2019. Given the ubiquitous and corrupting role money plays in our elections, and the known fact that even the Election Commission had objected to the scheme, one would have expected the SC to have taken up the matter on priority, and to at least have stayed the introduction of the bonds. It did neither. It allowed the donations to flow, and ruled as late as on April 12th, 2019 that political parties should submit details of the bonds IN A SEALED COVER to the Election Commission by 30th May, 2019. In other words, the two main criticisms of, and challenges to, the electoral bonds viz. that they deprived the citizens of any information on who funded which political party, and that this anonymity favoured the ruling party of the day, went unaddressed by the court. The status quo was allowed to continue. As a consequence from March 2018 to October 2019, Rs. 6128 crores have been donated by way of 12313 bonds purchased from the SBI by various unknown donors, according to the reply to an RTI query by ADR. The ADR estimates that between 85% to 95 % of this has gone to the BJP. This delay in decision making by the SC may already have caused irreparable damage to our electoral process, and even if the court now declares the scheme unconstitutional, it can hardly ask the BJP to return all the moneys it has already garnered.

  The Aarey forest case which played out in October this year provides another instance where the fait accompli trumped public concerns. On October 5th the Mumbai High court allowed the Metro Rail Corporation to fell 2500 trees in the Aarey forest for construction of a coach shed. A petition against this was filed in the Supreme Court the very next day, and on the 7th the SC ordered that no trees should be cut till the next date of hearing. Shockingly, the govt. counsel informed the court that 2141 trees had already been felled between the 5th and 7th. This was a predetermined exercise to alter the status quo to suit the Metro corp. The SC could still have stayed any further construction on the site but it did not do so. Consequently, construction on the denuded site is reportedly now going on in full swing, while the original petition languishes somewhere in the registry. It does not matter now what the court finally decides, because the trees have all gone: the relief sought has been overtaken by the fait accompli and the court will now have no option but to regularise it " in the public interest." What makes the whole issue more regrettable is the report of an investigation carried out by India Today

(https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/aarey-forest-800-1800-trees-transplanted-mumbai-metro-dead-ground-report-1609641-2019-10-15 ) which exposes another lie of the govt. on the basis of which it obtained the approval of the Mumbai High Court, viz that it had transplanted hundreds of trees as compensatory afforestation. The report now reveals that of 1800 trees transplanted 800 were found to be dead, and many more would also die soon.

  The Ram Mandir case is the mother of all fait accompli exemplars. Here there was not one but four historical  incidents of fait accompli that had a bearing on the judgment going in favour of the Hindu petitioners: the installation of the idols of Ram in 1949, the opening of the Babri masjid for worship by Hindus in 1986, the demolition of the mosque in 1992, and the construction of a makeshift temple in 1993. These-all illegitimate if not illegal- actions ensured the tilting of the status quo in favour of the Hindu parties, which then became the prime justification for the final award going in their favour.

   Most recently, the same twisted paradigm is playing out in Kashmir, post the 5th of August 2019. The detentions, arrests, curbs on the media, snapping of the internet have now been in place for more than one hundred days. Challenges to all of them, including the fundamental habeas corpus petitions, have been made in both the High Court and the Supreme Court but continue to languish there. Once again the new status quo has been imposed by a powerful state, and the judiciary appears to have accepted it as the new normal. With each passing day it becomes more entrenched and therefore more difficult to change even by a judicial intervention, if it ever comes.

   The strategy is simple- alter the status quo by force or some devious strategem, and then delay indefinitely any possible legal remedy till the relief sought becomes infructuous or impossible to implement.This new model of governance by fait accompli is completely antithetical to the rule of law because it alters the playing field in favour of a determined government bent on having its way, regardless of the legalities involved. " Justice delayed is justice denied" is an adage we have come to reluctantly accept in private matters, but it cannot be allowed to be extended also to matters of grave public importance or to fundamental constitutional rights and values. It rewards the aggressor and the transgressor and perpetuates an illegal act by giving it a legal endorsement. In the long run it becomes more difficult to turn the clock back. It is more than time that the courts realise the insidious nature of this strategy and act quickly to ensure that urgent matters of public importance should brook no delay. 

SILENCE IS NOT CONSENT, INEQUITY IS NOT CLOSURE.

   The day justice is postulated on the same premise as elections- viz. that the preferences of the majority must prevail- is the day that democracy is doomed. The 9th of November 2019 was perhaps such a day for us, for on this day the Supreme Court, inspite of accepting that the Babri Masjid had existed for 450 years and that the Muslims in Ayodhya had been wronged on multiple occasions, nonetheless ruled that the disputed site of the mosque should belong to the Hindu petitioners.

   There are two ways to arrive at a decision. The first-and correct-  is the deductive way: to collect the evidence, analyse it and arrive at a finding based on it. The second is the inductive way: to make up your mind first and then force, or induce, the interpretation of the evidence in the manner and direction that you want. The Ram Mandir order looks a lot like the second.

  Consider some of the salient findings of the Court itself: that the mosque had in fact existed at the site for more than 450 years, from 1528; that the British intervened in 1857 when a dispute arose with the Hindus and erected railings to separate the worshippers of the two communities; that there was no archaeological proof that there existed a Hindu temple below the site where the Babri Mosque was constructed; that the ASI could not confirm that the underlying structure( whatever it was) had been demolished to construct the mosque; that namaz was offered continuously at the site from 1857 to 1949; that the Muslims were in fact " being obstructed from free and unimpeded access to the mosque for the purposes of offering namaz"; that it was on the night of 16th December 1949 that " exclusion of the Muslims from worship and possession took place" ; that the Muslim community had been wronged on at least four occasions in the past- in 1949 by the surreptitious installation of idols of Ram in the inner structure, in 1986 by the illegal opening of the gates to permit entry and worship by Hindus at the disputed site, in 1992 by the unlawful demolition of the mosque, and finally in 1993 by the making of a make-shift temple to Ram there, in complete violation of the law and an order of the Supreme Court.

   This being the admitted, and accepted, evidence, most objective students of law would find it difficult to comprehend the paraprosdokian finding that the Muslims were not in possession and that the site belongs to the Hindus. The reason cited by the court is extremely ingenuous, viz. that the Muslim petitioners " have offered no evidence to indicate that they were in exclusive possession of the inner structure prior to 1857." This just begs the counter: was there any evidence to the contrary? Isn't the ( admitted) existence of the mosque itself since 1528 enough to establish their claim? And here is the real shocker: the Hindu petitioners too could not offer any solid evidence of " exclusive possession" during the same period. But the rules appear to have been relaxed in their case: whereas the Muslims were required to provide hard evidence, for their adversaries the court generously accepted mere " preponderance of probabilities". Shorne of legalese this means unsubstantiated assumptions.

   The fact that the judgement was unanimous, and that one judge even attached an addendum extolling the faith of the Hindus in Ram's birthplace, are ominous indicators of the progressively constricting grip of religion over our institutions of governance. The analyst Apoorvananda in a recent article in the WIRE has termed it " unanimous majoritarianism." An apt term which is bad enough in politics, but is a disaster in jurisprudence.

    The Prime Minister has claimed that this is a new dawn for a new India and that we( read Muslims)  should now move on. I wonder, would he have called it a new dawn if the judgement had gone the other way? And why is it that the onus of moving on should always be with the minorities, and not with the remaining 80% of us? Be that as it may, the Muslims have been largely silent  (which is good) but the right wing ideologues and politicians are perhaps reading it wrongly as acceptance. For it is an acceptance under duress and born of a fatigue under the repeated onslaughts of the last five years: triple talaq, NRC, Citizenship bill, Kashmir and the apprehension of more in the pipeline- a Uniform Civil Code, calls for legislation to limit the number of children, and the referring of the Sabarimala issue to a constitutional bench which, make no mistake, is the thin end of the wedge to focus on other personal practices of their faith. Now that it appears to them that even the legal system is ranged against them, they have little choice but to be silent, but it is the silence of the graveyard.

   There is no closure, either, as some of us would like to believe. In fact, this may just be a new beginning, not the bright new dawn the Prime Minister spoke about but a revitalised crusade for possession of the sites at Kashi Vishwanath, Mathura and other places where similar disputes have been lying quiescent, based on the same principles of faith and selective history as in the Ayodhya case. Even the Taj Mahal has been claimed to be a temple. The disturbing portents are already visible: in the last round of mediations on the Ramjanam bhoomi, most of the Muslim parties had agreed to the site being handed over to the Hindu petitioners provided they relinquished their claims to these other sites, but the latter did not accept this condition. Nor has any BJP/ RSS/ VHP leader given this assurance post the 9th of November either. And significantly, another Hindu outfit, the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha, one of the appellants in the apex court, has expressed its unhappiness at the decision to allot five acres of land for construction of a mosque in Ayodhya and stated that it is considering filing a review petition against this ( Indian Express, 13th November). These do not augur well for any closure.

   Some analysts believe that the Places of Worship ( Special Provisions) Act, 1991, which prohibits the conversion of, or alteration of the status quo of,  any religious place of worship as it stood on the 15th of August 1947, is adequate safeguard against any further re-possession attempts. But this is a naive mirage and pipe dream. We should not forget that the Babri masjid was demolished in 1992, when this Act was very much in force, and in the face of an assurance given to the Supreme Court. Secondly, as the Ramjanam Bhoomi judgement has shown, in today's India the law is subservient to faith, creative interpretation of history and brute political majority. And finally, it will take just one session of Parliament, or better still, an ordinance, to change the law, as Section 370 has chillingly demonstrated.

   However well intentioned the apex court may have been in trying to do a balancing act in the Ayodhya case, the fact is that it has now tilted the scales of justice in favour of the majority community. The inexorable  mandate of politics was already ranged against the minority community, now even the courts have deserted them. This is not the kind of closure an enlightened democracy should be proud of. 

PUT THE "ECO" BACK INTO ECONOMICS. [ II ]

                            [ The concluding and second part of two blogs on this subject ]

   Sloth, indulgence and hedonism have become second nature to us and have spawned many industries to cater to them, all of which have reached unsustainable levels. Consider the food we eat. As incomes rise, so does the craze for meats, a non-vegetarian diet. Global meat consumption in 2014 was a mind boggling 350 million tonnes, up from 55 million tonnes in 1961; per capita consumption has gone up from 20 kg to 43 kg in the same period. Livestock rearing alone accounts for 14.50% of all green house gases. In addition, 100 million tonnes of fish are harvested from the oceans every year, and 75% of all fishing grounds are exhausted. Rearing of livestock for the meat industry is taking a heavy toll on our forests, farmlands and water. In the USA alone 2/3rd of all cropland is devoted to growing grains and soya for cattle, even as 2 billion people, mainly children, don't get two meals a day. The destruction of the Amazon rain forests and tropical forests of Malaysia is intended to increase the area for cattle farming.  One kg of meat requires 13000 liters of water, as against 100 liters for one kg of potato. The world wide transportation of meat from the producing regions like Argentina, Brazil and India to consuming centers leaves a massive carbon footprint. The transportation of "luxury foods" from growing to consumption areas- champagne from France, Wagyu beef from Japan, caviar from the Caspian sea- leaves an enormous carbon footprint. It is high time we eschewed exotic foods from far away and "eat local". 

  The United Nations has cautioned that meat consumption has to be reduced by half by 2050 if its deleterious ecological impacts have to be reversed. Although this is not likely, there are still some hopeful signs. Surveys abroad indicate that 25% of millennials are either vegetarians or vegans. Many more are " flexitarians", eating meat once in a while while abjuring it as a staple part of their diet. The manufacture and sale of  PLT or"plant based meats" is slowly picking up thanks to the research of companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat. Even that burger bastion McDonalds has begun testing out PLT burgers in the USA. But it's a long haul to the UN target.

   The other end of the alimentary canal is also a cause for ecological worry. A little known fact is the deforestation being caused by our insistence on using toilet paper instead of water. The world consumed 36.70 million tonnes of toilet/ tissue paper in 2017 and the figure shall reach 50.51 m/t. according to industry estimates. Americans are by far the biggest users of this bum wrap- annual per capita consumption of 24 rolls or 12 kgs. The sad part is that 27000 trees are felled EVERY DAY to produce this modern convenience which we have done without except in the last hundred years or so only. How does it make any sense to flush whole forests down the toilet, just because we find it convenient ?

   Mass tourism is ravaging the environment on an unprecedented scale. 1.20 billion international and 5.60 billion domestic tourists every year are the new scourge, most of them going to the same overloaded destinations rather than exploring new ones. The new concern globally is "overtourism" and countries- their citizens rather- are hitting back, forcing their governments to regulate this swarm. Venice, Barcelona, Dubrovnik, Paris, Kyoto, Bali, Phillipines, Rio d Janeiro- all are now imposing restrictions on numbers,seasons, timings to "detourist" these places. Some are even shutting down destinations altogether, as in Borcay and Maya beach in Thailand. In Europe an organisation  called SET ( Network of South European Cities against Tourism) has come up to wage the battle against "tourism terrorists." More emphasis has to be given to "destination management" or else the hordes from the cities and towns shall decimate what little is left of our natural assets. The 9.5% of global GDP and 10% of jobs that tourism provides cannot be the end-all of economic planning.

  And then there is the internet and the digital universe, an alternative to the real world which most of us now prefer to live in, little realising its ecological impacts. With more than 4 billion users hooked on to this virtual world for 8-10 hours a day, the power required to run the world wide web is astronomical, and growing exponentially- the USA alone consumes 70 billion KWH of energy annually, equivalent to 8000 MW of power, more than the peak consumption of New Delhi, according to the Berkley Lab. The per capita annual emission of CO2 on this account alone is 300 pounds. The global power consumed by the internet is 200 Terra Watt Hours- more than the total energy requirement of Iran!

  According to a recent report by the French think tank the Shift Project, just online streaming of videos- Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and porn- produces emissions equivalent to that of Spain, and this will double in the next six years. Just watching a half hour show results in emissions of 1.6 kgs of CO2 equivalent, equal to driving 6.28 kms. Most of us never even think of deleting the thousands of email and other data that we no longer need, little realising the enormous amounts of power needed by servers and data centers to store them. 

   And now countries and IT conglomerates are pushing for 5G, just so that we can make our couch-ridden lives even easier with IOT ( Internet of Things)- every thing which can have a chip embedded in it will now be connected to the net. Why? Why can't we open the fridge to see if the milk or eggs need to be replenished, instead of a chip in it sending an order direct to your grocer? Why can't we come home from office and turn on the air conditioner, instead of sending it a digital command from ten kms away? It is estimated that 5G can triple or quadruple the demand for power for the net, it will need a transmission tower every 100 meters, the risks of radiation will go up exponentially ( in a recent experiment in Europe hundreds of birds fell out of the sky, killed by the trial radiation). And I am not even mentioning here its other deleterious effects on human rights, privacy, state surveillance, freedom of speech. Suffice it to ask: Why do we need 5G at all ?

   It is more than time to start adding up the environmental and health costs of this obsession with making our lives easier and easier and indulging our appetites more and more. Technology and wealth should be employed to feed the hungry, eradicate poverty, improve health, provide education and jobs- not to satiate the gluttons, create more multi billionaires, or inject ourselves with botox to emulate porn stars. We have worshipped for too long at the altar of GDP. If growth falls, so be it; if unemployment rises so be it. Governments have enough funds to take care of those effected, and enough options to raise more if only they think rationally and not indulge the rodomontadish urges of some leaders. One foregone bullet train ( which nobody but a few jewellers in Ahmedabad needs ) can provide Rs. one lakh each to  10 million families, or a population of 50 million. Add to this the multitude of statues being built to satisfy egos and win elections, the wholly unnecessary waste of Rs. 13000 crores to demolish the legacy and heritage of the central vista of New Delhi, Rs. 5.60 lakh crores proposed to be spent on the hugely disastrous and unstudied River-linking project, the Rs. 12000 crore on a Char Dham highway that no genuine pilgrim desires, and other such grandiose projects, and one will realise that the money is not a problem to compensate those worst hit by stricter environmental and ECOnomic planning. The world is already beginning to explore some of these while we are still obsessed exclusively with Kashmir, NRC and arresting everyone who dissents. There are, for example, UBI ( Universal Basic Income), Inheritance Tax, Carbon Tax, Inequity Tax. In other words, raise the moneys from those who have cornered most of the planet's resources ( the top 20%, by one estimate), those who consume more, leave a larger ecological footprint, want to indulge their senses to extreme limits. It is time, in other words, for our economists to discover an alternative paradigm for planning. They have spent the last 150 years devastating the environment, it's time now to find a way to save it.
   They will, of course, do nothing of the kind because they cannot agree on anything. Even as the Indian economy has been hurtling down the slope for the last three years our economic pundits still cannot decide whether the problem is "cyclical" or "structural." Governments too will not do anything if the ordinary citizen does not force them to. And the citizen will remain somnolent till the realisation dawns that, in the final analysis, the solution lies only with him or her. At the end of the day the only answer is for us- you and I- to simplify our lifestyles: the way we eat, dress, travel, entertain ourselves, spend, consume scarce resources like water and energy; respect natural eco-systems and other life forms. The power to save the planet does not lie with governments- it lies with us.
                                                                       [ Concluded]

M. K. KAW-- THE LAST OF A VANISHING BREED.

                                       M. K. KAW-- THE LAST OF A VANISHING BREED.

   Last week another tenuous link to a glorious past was broken. MK Kaw, a retired IAS officer of the 1964 batch of the Himachal Pradesh cadre passed away at the untimely age of 78 in Delhi, suddenly and without even bidding farewell to his myriad admirers and friends. Mr. Kaw was perhaps the last of that unique breed of scholar-administrators who made the IAS one of the inimitable civil services of the world. He represented a pedigree that has almost disappeared today-an inquisitive student of many disciplines, an eclectic man of letters, an epicure of refined and gentlemanly tastes, and a public servant of exceptional sensitivity and ability.

   He was a prodigy who did his matric at the age of ten, completed his Masters when he was only sixteen, and joined the IAS at twenty three at his very first attempt. And all this without ever attending a formal school. He wrote 13 books, was an artist, a singer, a deeply spiritual man, a social worker who headed the All India Kashmiri Sansthan for many years, served as Dean of the Sri Satya Sai International Center for Human Values; all this while he discharged his bureaucratic responsibilities with rare competence, vision and objectivity at all levels, ending a remarkable career as Secretary to the Govt. of India.

   All of these qualities and talents are to be found in many persons, but it is only once in a generation that they all together come in a harmonious package in one individual. And rarer still in someone who is a perfect gentleman, a warm and caring individual. I worked for two years under him as his Joint Secretary in the Finance Department in the eighties. The seniority gap between us was eleven years, in pecking order terms the distance between a meerkat and a lion, an unbridgeable gap in the civil services. But Mr. Kaw bridged such chasms effortlessly, with gentle banter, irrefutable logic, an unmatched breadth of vision, a mordant sense of humour and a twinkle in his eyes that dared you to be offended. He bonded with his juniors as no one else has done either before or after him, and not surprisingly, managed to get the best out of them without any officious effort. In those days there used to be two lunch clubs in the Secretariat. The Senior lunch club was for the Secretaries and would admit no upstarts below the 1972 batch, we hewers of wood and drawers of water belonged to the junior lunch club. Mr. Kaw, however, would join us for lunch once in a while and regale us with tales of intrigues in the senior version. We asked him to become a regular member of our club but he declined, stating: " I confess the food here is much tastier than the balanced diet in the senior club but the gossip there is much spicier!"

   Mr. Kaw had an unmatched and contagious zest for life and living. He was literally the heart and soul of the IAS Association, organising its cultural nights, farewells, dinners. He invariably wrote a play or two, humorous and satirical ones; I still recollect one that eerily anticipated today's ghar wapsi rationale- it was titled The Department of Love. He always encouraged me to write what in those days were called "middles" on the op-ed pages of newspapers, perhaps recognising that my forte lay in the realm of nonsense rather than sense! I last met him a year ago at a lunch where he stoutly objected to my not mailing him by blogs. I promised to do so immediately and have since been marking all of them to him. How do I now delete his name?

   In his autobiography " An Outsider Everywhere" Mr. Kaw terms himself the perennial outsider. For once he was wrong. For he was the outsider who was at home everywhere, such was his endowment, warmth and flair. For he showed us how beautiful and amazing this world could be, if only we cast off our blinkers and approached it with honest curiosity. And then, on the 28th of last month, he just walked  away , his mission accomplished, as if reminding us of these words from the "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam":

                " Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,

                  Before we too into the Dust descend;

                  Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,

                  Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and - sans End!"

Goodbye, sir, and thank you- for everything.  

PUT THE "ECO" BACK INTO ECONOMICS [ 1 ]

                                 [ This is the first of two blogs on the subject ]

   A fair number of my friends are economists, though none of them has won the Nobel prize yet, nor is any one likely to. One of them, whose research is on the Game Theory, did come within sniffing distance of it, but has now beaten a hasty retreat. Now, Game Theory is a mathematical model which maximises the chances of success by studying strategic decision making between rational individuals. My friend gave in for two reasons: one, he couldn't explain how the BJP's mathematics always managed to convert a minority in votes into a majority in seats, as in Haryana, Goa, and Karnataka. Two, there was the small matter of being branded an anti-national, which is the fate that has befallen our last two Economics Nobel laureates, Amartya Sen and Abhijit Banerjee. Now that economist gurus like Mr. Piush Goel and Rakesh Sinha have questioned not only their left leanings but also their "foreign wives", can another sedition case be far behind? Of course, our Prime Minister did have a cordial meeting ( without the hugs) with Mr. Banerjee but my friend is not taken in by this familiar drill where the PM provides the fake veneer of civility while the real message is conveyed by his underlings. He will henceforth confine his investigations to underwears-an emerging field of economic theory which somehow escaped the attentions of Marx ( Karl, not Groucho), Keynes, Milton Friedman, Adam Smith, von Hayek, to mention just a few.

   But as usual I digress. The reason I mention my economist friends is because I suspect I am about to lose all of them pronto. For I cannot share their feelings of doom and gloom about our current economic downturn. I am overjoyed that auto sales have fallen by 24% and that the blighters sold 184000 fewer cars last month. I am ecstatic that NHAI is unable to build more highways because it cannot pay its contractors. I silently thank the Houthi rebels for knocking out 5% of global crude production by bombing the Saudi refinery.I cannot conceal my glee at the fact that airlines are shutting down, that transport of goods has fallen by 30%, that consumption of meat is declining and more people than ever are content to eat stalks and leaves , that more and more citizens are beginning to resist Aarey type choices. For this is my simple and sacrilegious theory: some things which may be bad for conventional economics are good for our planet. I call this ECO-nomics, i.e. economics based on ecology.

   For the simple and inescapable fact is that the planet cannot be held hostage to GDP any longer. As Professor Robert Gordon of North-Western University, Chicago, has pointed out, global GDP has been growing at 2% per annum since 1900 and can grow no further. Infinite growth in a world with finite resources is not possible without irreparably damaging the environment. No economist ( or politician), however, will admit this or prescribe the only sane solution: make life styles simpler, consume less of everything, don't use technology only for physical convenience or monetary profits. The world needs to move from the classic consumption driven model to a "nonsumption" model or a "minimalist" life style. In other words, consume less of everything- goods, services, natural resources. The theory of constantly driving up "demand" so that "supply" can be increased to further raise GDP is proving to be disastrous for the planet's well being and survival. The current emphasis on just GDP is not only counter productive, it is also misleading because it does not factor in the cost of natural capital expended, i.e. the environmental costs. Not surprisingly, a recent UN study found that if this were factored in then the GDP of 140 countries would be in the negative! GDP should be replaced by a more accurate SDP or Sustainable Domestic Product- i.e. GDP minus the environmental costs. Let us look at just a few sectors where ever increasing demand is playing havoc with the planet.

   Why do we need more vehicles? The world already has 1.2 billion passenger cars ( i.e. one for every six individuals) and this will reach 2 billion by 2035. A mind boggling 97.3 million cars were manufactured in 2017. India had 230 million registered motor vehicles as on 31.3.2018, Delhi had 10.98 million- one for every two of its citizens, including presumably Bangladeshis, Afghans and Rohingyas. Motor vehicles are responsible for 30% of total global CO2 emissions. They also cause 150,000 deaths in accidents every year in India. They have taken away our walking spaces, our parks; destroyed our pristine natural assets ( Rohtang pass). People now drive ten kilometers to Lodhi gardens in order to walk for two kms! It's time to trim these numbers, and my suggestions are: ban SUVs, allow only income tax payees to buy cars, ration one car per family, fix a monthly fuel ration/ allowance. There is a question of equity involved here too: just because you have the money why should you be able to corner/ pollute all the world's natural public goods- air, water, space, rivers, forests, mountains?

  Civil aviation is another major culprit, though most people don't recognise it. It adds 1.250 billion tonnes of green house gases to our atmosphere every year and is metastatizing  like a cancer. There were 4.1 billion flyers in 2017, expected to reach 7.8 billion by 2038: the vast majority of these don't NEED to fly, they do it for R+R or because their status will not permit them to adopt humbler but more eco-friendly modes of transport. There are approx 150,000 commercial flights every day. The sector clocked 7.64 trillion kms flown in 2017, which will reach 18.97 trillion kms in 2038! Boeing estimates that 39600 more planes will be needed by 2038 to cater to the increasing traffic. Where does this curve end? It's not just the skies we are losing; planes need airports, and airports need land, causing more deforestation and displacement of the poor. Our own Civil Aviation Ministry has just announced the construction of twenty new airports, for which 100,000 hectares of land will be needed. For the new Mumbai airport thousands of mangroves are being cut, wetlands filled in and a whole river being diverted. For how long can this go on? Why should one take a flight to go from Delhi to Chandigarh, or from Mumbai to Pune or from Bangalore to Chennai, when perfectly good train connections are available? It has been calculated that one train can carry the passenger load of six wide bodied aircraft. Governments should incentivise train travel and discourage flying by imposing a heavy carbon tax on flight tickets, not permit short-haul flights, stop building new airports, add more super fast trains like the Tejas and Vande Bharat, ban private or chartered jets ( which do not pass the equity test either).

                 [  To be continued. The second part of this blog shall be posted next week.]