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India: A Test of Global Sustainability  

By: Parvez Nawab

2-20-97

Dr. Bowler, biology 191B

The Evolving Nation

India the mysterious nation some times referred to as "the Jewel in The Crown" or "The Land of the Snake Charmers" has been a star of the East, an exotic, ancient land that has consistently beckoned the curious and adventurous. Although, it is believed that the nation is on path towards becoming a powerful industrial nation within the next twenty years. India , even today is a of culture aged for centuries and preserved by time itself. Its forts, palaces temples provide a living history of time. Since the beginning of time and recorded history of this wonderful nation, there exists a celebration between wildlife and culture, which can be found mentioned in all ancient religious texts, temples, carvings, palace adornments, and in the daily rituals of peoples’ lives. Well, then you must be wondering, why write this paper ? The simplest answer being, this nation is faced with too much and too fast rapid change. And the question arises, "Can the seventh largest country in the world and Asia’s second largest nation with a current population about 910 million people sustain the rapid changes without completely destroying its resources of humans, land, water and wildlife habitats?" Before forming any conclusions, keep in mind that 65% (estimated 600 million) of its inhabitants are still living life as their ancestors, meaning a simple life on the farm or in the rural villages. India is currently threatened by one prominent factor to its sustainability, which is the uncontrolled growth of its enormous population. The population boom is leading to water problems, air pollution, deforestation and destruction of other wildlife habitats.

Population Boom

India is the largest democracy in the world, with about 16% of the world’s population. India’s population growth remains around 2%, and currently the country grows by about 17 million people a year, which means its population will double within the next 35 years. But, keep in mind that not all births are recorded by the government, because many births still take place at home by means of midwifes or other elder women at home. Demographics estimate that even under the most optimistic estimates- India’s population will not stabilize below 1.7 billion (CIA, 1995). Take into consideration that India is one-third the size of America with a total land area of only 2,973,190 km2. The country remains predominantly rural, with just 26% of its people living in cities. Because of the current changes taking place in the nation’s economic, there is a swell of migration flowing into the cities from rural villages and farms. This tremendous migration is attributed to modernization of farming and cultivation techniques. Eviction of farmers and villagers is also a contribution of new irrigation schemes, which tend to divert the water supply away from rural villages. Construction of power plants and dams have also led to flooding of some villages and forests dwellings to retain the rivers, thus further adding to the influx of migration to the cities. Among the most controversial case involved the World Bank’s funding of the Andhra Pradesh II project in India, which resulted in an estimated two million people being uprooted from their ancestral lands and homes and forced into lower standard of life-style in near by cities. Although, there were plans for resettlement and compensations for these people, the actual results never materialized because in India those who oppose economic growth or forced resettlement are frequently intimidated, harassed, arrested, beaten and even shot dead. Although, there is a greater interest of foreign investors in India’s growing economic growth, the migration of rural people into the cities continues to out pace economic and industrial growth of the nation, causing a sharp rise in the numbers of urban poor. In 1995, India had over 30 cities of one million or more residents including three of the world’s 20 largest cities --Bombay, Calcutta, and Delhi – according to the United Nations Estimates. Between 1990 and 1995 the average annual growth rate of India’s major cities far exceeds any explanations and expectations; Bombay had a rate of 4.22%, Delhi had a rate of 3.80%, and Calcutta a rate of 1.67%. Nearly 1/3 of the people in India’s largest 23 cities live in shanty settlements on sites that are along river banks, which are prone to floods, and other sites, which are vulnerable to industrial pollution, according to the WRI study. The crowded conditions of the shanty settlements are ideal for the spread of communicable diseases. Rapid urban growth and industrialization have brought tremendous changes to India.

Water: The Source of Life 5 6

The most serious environmental health problems in India are related to water. Rivers and water reservoirs are polluted, and groundwater levels are falling several meters every year. In India, water comes in three criterion and these are too much water, too little water, and too bad water. In most cases water supplies occur in two of the mentioned criterion during most of the year in the same area over time. The masses of India believe, that India as a nation lives and dies on the amount of monsoon rains in the given year. If the monsoon season brings too much rain than the agriculture and eventually all aspects of India’s economy suffers. During the monsoon seasons in India the river banks overflow causing the loss of many shanty villages and the loss of hundreds of lives because there are no warning precautions as far as mother nature is concerned. The flooding of the Ganges River forced more than 10,000 people in eastern India to abandon their homes following three days of heavy monsoon rains (UPI, 1995). This is a typical situation in India, where a week’s worth of heavy monsoon rain can displace one million people without any warning. The situation is being more complicated in Northern India because of the continued expansion of the logging industries at the foothills of the Himalayas, which is causing more of the mountain water run-off to flood the river banks yearly.

In many parts of India the ground water levels have gone down by 10 to 15 times or even disappeared completely. Falling groundwater levels are particularly critical in areas where there are no other access to drinkable water except through potable water wells. In the cities the problem is being worsened by the increase demand on drinkable water due in part to rapid population growths. Some metropolitan cities have had to resort to limiting the amount of hours of water supply available during the day. This has caused major problems for the shanty settlements, where water is available through a few water outlets provided by the cities. There are usually long lines for these water distribution with some people having to go without water for the entire day. According to Marcus Moench, senior staff scientist with the Natural Institute in San Francisco, water tables over broad areas of India have dropped by more than 5 meters, and in some places more than 10 meters. Also, Moench believes that over pumping of water under cities is a hazard of rapid urban growth, and the control and the use of sustainable groundwater management and the groundwater quality are likely to come under fierce competition in the near future.

The squatter settlements along the river banks and the near freshwater lakes around the outskirts of cities or villages have polluted the waters to the extent that they have become essentially sewers. In most cases the water from the rivers or freshwater lakes serves as drinking water as well as sewer disposal. Drinking water at pumps in Bombay emerges green from high chrome content. At points along the rivers the bacterial levels registered nearly 20 times India’s permissible limit, according to the India Times. Although, water treatment facilities are being constructed to deal with these problems in the cities, the distribution and supply tends to lag behind demand due mostly to the continuous urban expansion. Intense public campaigns against the critical problem of scarce potable water have made impressive progress. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) access to potable water increased between 11980 and 1991 from 77% in cities and more dramatically from 31% to 84% in rural areas.

In contrast to the improvements being made in water supply, sanitation tends to be major problem throughout India. Of the 3000 cities in India with more than 100,000 population, only 200 have basic sewage treatment facilities. Rural sanitation remains almost nonexistent, and barely ½ of the urban populations had access to adequate sanitation in 1991, according to WHO. This problem is believed to be the result of the local governments lack of planning, others blame the urban population explosion, and others blame the stubborn caste system and its assignment of waste removal chores to lower castes as a part of the problem in many urban areas.

These critical conditions are ideal for the spread of communicable diseases. The most critical of these include tuberculosis, leprosy, cholera, shigellosis, polio, and parasitic diseases, according to the Travel Bureau. Diarrhea claims up to 300,000 children’s lives each year, Who estimates that water related and sanitary problems cause about 75% of all illnesses and 80% of child mortality. Intensive immunization programs have made good progress against diseases such as polio. Despite continuing problems, life expectancies in India have risen over the past decades, and the World Research Institute (WRI) study notes "signs that India is entering the epidemiological transition," a change in disease patterns from infectious to chronic/degenerative, due to improved child nutrition, immunization, and improved access to primary health care.

Air Pollution

The major source of air pollution in India comes from fuel wood burning, untreated industrial smoke, vehicular pollution in the forms of smoke and noise. Currently, heavy use of fuel wood, mainly for cooking, contributes to the high levels of air borne particulate matter and has caused the depletion of forest cover around most Indian cities. The Hindu custom of cremating the dead using wood exacerbates this situation. Women and children are especially vulnerable to heavy concentrations of smoke in unventilated cooking areas of the home from both wood and dung used as fuel; the WRI study cites smoke concentrations of 25,000 micrograms per cubic meter in Ahmedabad households. Besides chronic eye irritation, more serious consequences include bronchitis and respiratory infections. For young children suffering from malnutrition, these problems tend to be magnified by urban crowding and poor sanitation standards. Still, little has slowed the pollution caused by the country’s reliance on its extensive coal reserves and the tremendous rise in vehicular traffic. India’s coal contain high concentrations of ash, which introduces heavy particulate matter and sulfur into the atmosphere and cause acid rain. In the past two decades, the number of vehicles on India’s roads has increased ten folds, and all of the vehicles are running on leaded gasoline or just kerosene in many cities. The majority of vehicles on the roads tend to be beyond their time and they are burning leaded fuels without any catalytic converters, which tends to add to the air pollution tremendously. From my own experience, during a recent visit back home in 1995, I was flabbergasted by the quality of air in Bombay and surprised by the fact that people in the city continue to live with such unhealthy air and even more unbelievable are the individuals daring to smoke cigarettes in that murky air. The smog in Los Angeles is considered bad by world standards, but what I experienced in Bombay was unbelievable, you could not see farther than 100 feet in front of you during the peak afternoon hours with the sun blazing somewhere above the air. And as a result of these conditions and also due to a lack of infrastructure the noise pollution produced by the tremendous numbers of vehicles on the already overcrowded streets is ear piercing. The taxi drivers and other motor vehicles honk to make a turn, merge, or simply because of frustration on the streets.

The primary reasons for these conditions are not a lack of laws, but in fact as in other nations it is the lack of enforcement at the local and governmental levels due to corrupt enforcement agencies and environmental agent throughout the nation. In fact, India has some of the best laws of preventing and dealing with pollution, medical and waste disposal, industrial pollution control and other required environmental laws, but these laws exist only on paper and not in the nation’s action. The major lack of care and enforcement ls the result of the public being uninformed about the hazards and quality of pollution in the air. India as a nation seems to be occupied in trying to obtain the lifestyle of the Western industrialized nations to be concerned about what is happening in their own nation. For example in 1986, India complemented and stiffened earlier pollution control laws governing water and air (enacted in 1974 and 1981, respectively) with passage of the Environmental Protection Act. The new law aims to regulate hazardous wastes using the threats of shutdowns and criminal proceedings against companies that fail to comply. It requires companies to provide the government with inventories of toxic materials and to be available for inspection. So far the shut downs have occurred around the Taj Mahal, most probably because the government realized that the monument is a source of foreign investments and interest as a vacation destination (economic benefit).

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The famous Taj Mahal monument focused world attention on pollution concerns when studies found that the industrial emissions around the vicinity were causing the monument’s marble to deteriorate at a extremely fast rate. Public outcry forced the closure of several nearby foundries and refineries, which to date have in most cases been reopened with the companies promising to find methods to reduce the pollution output. But, still tightened standards have prompted many industries to install pollution reduction facilities, but enforcement lags way behind as in everything else in India. A huge backlog of litigation in India’s courts blunts the legal instrument’s effectiveness.

Environmental Impact

I’ve mentioned only some of the problems faced by India in sustaining its enormous population as well as its resources of lands, wildlife and fauna. The rapid population growth in the urban areas are causing the local vegetation and environments to disappear completely. In Bombay, the wetlands are considered completely lost. In fact in a recent article, the Union Environment Minister bemoaned in Parliament that this winter only two cranes - great exquisite birds of Siberia migrated to India for their winter hibernation (India Journal, 1997). In previous years and for many millennia before several thousands used to make India as their winter home, but because of the loss of wetlands and connected forests the extinction of these magnificent creatures seems irreversible. Many other birds and land animals that used to roam the lands and dense forests are threatened because of human encroachment into protected sanctuaries by the increase in local human population and its requirement of wood supplies for fuel, animals are killed for the protection of their properties and sustaining their livelihood. Recently, the NASA pictures of the Western coast of India identified the coastline around Bombay(Mumbai) to be dead seas. Most of the marine life in these areas has disappeared during the last 30 years. The once famous and rich fishermen and their families around Haji Ali are now living in a building complex called Rewa- Apartments and all of them work in nearby factories and offices because of the loss of marine life.

India’s ongoing economic growth may have won it many friends aboard, but it has turned out to be the worst enemy of its wildlife habitats, according to international environmentalists. Areas in and around national parks, tiger reserves, wildlife sanctuaries and even world heritage sites and biosphere reserves have been destroyed, reducing further the habitat available for the country’s rich fauna. According to Dave Curry, Director of the London based Environmental Investigation Agency(EIA) , "Across the country[India], essential forest habitat is being lost to mines, logging, hydro-plants and irrigation schemes, power plants, orchards, tea plantations, and agriculture development. Legislation designed to stop encroachment of protected areas is being systematically circumvented or ignored." The acid rain, DDT, other pesticides and deforestation have converted almost 50 percent of Indian lands as degraded wastelands. Still to date it is believed that one out of three Indians is underfed or hungry on a daily bases according to Dr. Cohen, a notable expert on human population at Cornell University. At a recent luncheon with Dr. Cohen, I was able to discuss his outlook upon the further of India and its dilemma. Dr. Cohen informed me that India already has a solution to its problems, which is educating its people. In a recent study the state of Kerala in southern India has had a increase in literacy level among the overall population and especially among the women, which has significantly slowed the birth rate. This decline in birth rate is considered to be the result of these educated women entering the workplace and as a result, they are getting married at a later time in their lives and also having less children because of time restrains due to their jobs.

This my friends makes India a great example of global sustainability for the further and provides us with what might be the outcome of the world if the current problems are not dealt with by the world as a community. Indian scientists are at a disadvantage in working with simpler instruments for their research. But, India with its growing numbers of trained men and women could be a considerable advantage and make significant contributions worthy of it’s nations past statues, if our scientific community purposefully addresses the challenge of working together to solve the worlds problems.

References:

Environmental Report: India Journal, January 14, 1997.

Sites of Interest on the Web

http://mamba.bio.uci.edu/~pjbryant/bio65/

http://www.wcmc.org.uk/igcmc/main.html

http://www.webcom.com/prakaash/issues/environmet/pollution/toc.html

http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/hpg/cesmg/docudive.html

http://fellini.syr.vcomm.net/enviro/indiamex.html

http://www.tripprep.com/country/sp86.html

http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/english/geo/asia/f-enviro.html

http://odci.gov/cia/publicications/95fact/in.html

http://pathfinder.com/@@nSwRhQUAKoX17YaY¼ ional/1996/960325/cover.indiaenviro.html

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