Recurrent Drought And Deluge
On South Asian Subcontinent- A Long Term Remedy
(Dr. Bijay Kumar
Sharma, Patna, India)
The year 2005 AD has been
unfortunate generally for the whole international community
and particularly for South Asian Subcontinent. First
we had the huge tidal waves called Tsunami triggered
by an underwater earthquake near Indonesia. Next there
was a massive deluge in whole of Gujrat at the onset
of the monsoon. Then there were cloudbursts followed
by torrential downpour first over Mumbai and next over
Andhra Pradesh. The downpour is recurring over Gujrat
and Mumbai. Simultaneously whole of Bihar, Orissa and
Madhya Pradesh are in grip of varying degree of drought.
This has resulted in a huge life and property loss.
Are these heaven sent calamities? Definitely not.
Our Agriculture and associated activities still contribute
30% of Gross National Product but our Agricultural Sector
remains heavily under-financed and under-invested both
at private level as well as governmental level. Our
rural assets are still worth $ 300 billion whereas our
Industrial and our service sector assets are worth $
100 billion. Still the lion share of new investments
is going in Industrial and Tertiary sector. The investment
in the Primary sector is so meager that it is not even
enough for the maintenance of the existing agricultural
assets and what to say of creating new assets in the
country side. This is after 10 Five-Year Plans in our
Socialistic Nehruvian Planned Economy.
There is a huge accumulated surplus in the rural area
as reflected in the household saving by World Bank Data.
Bihar is topping in whole of India in rural as well
as urban house hold saving still there is the largest
outflux of migrant labourers from Bihar to other states
of India. This clearly shows that because of lack of
basic infrastructure such as road and power , there
is a huge capital flight from Bihar to other states
in general and particularly from the rural area to the
urban area within Bihar.
This is just one facet of the problem. The other facet
of the problem is the government funds for Integrated
Rural Devlopment. We have 540 Members of Parliament
plus in the thirty Indian States and five Union Territories
we have 300 members of legislative assembly and legislative
council in each state on an average. The MP’s have
Rs 2 crores per annum and MLA’s & MLC’s
have Rs 1 crore earmarked for their respective Land
Area Development. Apart from this we have Jawahar Rozgar
Yojna, Indira Awas Yojana and Food for Work program
and many new ones are coming up with every new Government.
If all these funds were utilized conscientiously and
judiciously then there would be no dearth of employment
nor there would have been lack of fund for Primary Capital
Formation.
Whatever rural assets, we had, have been wantonly or
through sheer neglect destroyed over the years. One
most important sector where rural assets have been destroyed
out of sheer greed is the forest and orchards.
India has total land area of 300
million hectares out of which 140 million hectares are
arable land. This means rest is forest cover, mountains
and deserts. So at least there should have been 40%
forest cover but LANSAT imagery shows that we have only
11% and less forest cover.
This leads to serious global warming as well as erosion
of soil. Global warming leads to serious disruption
of South-Westerly Monsoon Winds and soil erosion leads
to lack of retention power of moisture by soil resulting
in recurring floods.
The first and foremost point in Long Term Disaster
Management should be to launch a concerted program of
massive afforestation primarily by private efforts because
it is the big and medium landowners who are primarily
responsible for the serious , illegal tree logging.
The same landowners were also responsible for consciously
sabotaging the Nation Wide Afforestation Program launched
by the Forest Departments in different states. The Forest
Department had given the incentive of planting logwoods
in private plots at Governmental Cost. The planted logwoods
would remain the private property of the plot owners.
Such a scheme had been formulated so that most of the
bare , agricultural lands of low yield may be brought
under tree cover. But just the contrary occurred. Instead
of increased tree cover there was decreased tree cover.
The big and medium landowners got their orchards logged
at very remunerative price and brought these orchard
areas under Government Log Wood Scheme. Thus net tree
cover area remained the same and subsequently an epidemic
spread which destroyed all the logwoods and it was never
replanted. Thus in the long run tree cover has drastically
decreased.
Therefore there should be a strong legislation from
the Government for compelling the big and medium landowners
for carrying out afforestation program over 40% of their
land holding at their cost. This will include the planting
of tree belts which will prevent soil erosion due to
strong westerly and easterly winds.
Apart from this there should be a strong legislation
for MP’s, MLA’s and MLC’s whereby they
are compelled to utilize their Land Area Development
Funds. If they default on this by a certain margin say
by 50% then they should be debarred from standing for
any public post. These two legislations will go a long
way in correcting the ecological imbalance as well as
infrastructural imbalance. Once these imbalances are
corrected, primary capital will be repaired and maintained,
new primary capital formation will take place and conditions
will be created for overall economic development and
for increased employment opportunities.
This in my opinion is the only long term remedy for
the recurrent cycle of drought and deluge.
Contributor: Dr. B. K. Sharma
is lecturer in Electronics and Communication Engg, NIT,
Patna. Dr. Sharma’s academic profile includes a
B. Tech from IIT, Kharagpur, M. Tech from Stanford University,
USA and PhD from University of Maryland, USA. He has
more than 30 years experience of teaching and research
in the field of Electronics.
