The exacting price of democracy in India: Mullaperiyar and Kudankulam

Mark Twain famously observed that water in America’s west was for fighting and that whiskey was for drinking.  Here in the southern part of India, while Twain’s whiskey might not be applicable, fights, though, are in plenty!

A significant fight is over a dam that is located in the border areas of two southern states—Kerala and Tamil Nadu.  The Mullaperiyar Dam is in Kerala, and provides much needed water for irrigation in neighboring areas in Tamil Nadu too, especially during the drier months.

The dam itself is more than a hundred years old, and there are concerns over its structural safety.  Kerala, whose towns and villages lie downstream from the dam, is worried that the hundred year old dam might not be up to contemporary standards.  Public policy in contexts like this dam is about first evaluating costs and benefits, and a political decision later.  However, the feuding politicians in both the states seem to be operating only with votes on their minds.  But then, aren’t such intentions fundamental requirements to be a politician?     

The dam(n) water conflict is more than mere war of words.  Largely goaded by the histrionics of politicians, protesters in the border areas of Kerala and Tamil Nadu severely affected trade and commerce as well.  The region around the dam is known for its cardamom production and, India is the dominant global exporter of cardamom, with Guatemala a distant second.  Yes, Guatemala, which is half way around the planet from this dam!  The Economic Times reported that “the inferior quality of Guatemalan cardamom” cannot compete with the spice from India.  As one can imagine, the suspension of cardamom auctions for two weeks quickly amounted to losses that have been estimated at more than 1,000 million rupees (about $20 million.)  Thankfully, trade resumed after a two week standoff, preventing further losses.

Even as the war of words has abated over the dam conflict, another project continues to be a huge headache for the government at the federal level, and for the state of Tamil Nadu.  This is over a nuclear power generation plant located at Kudankulam.  India faces severe energy shortages, and has been pushing nuclear power for electricity generation.  The Kudankulam project has a capacity of 2,000 megawatts, and the first phase was scheduled to be commissioned in December 2011.

With the construction work practically completed, and with various pre-operation tests underway, quite suddenly extensive protests have been launched against the facility.  Here too, as in the case of the Mullaperiyar Dam, rhetoric has preceded reasoning. It appears that there was little to no protests right from the project planning stages, and all the way through the ten years of construction, for which work began in September 2001.  It is rather ironic that opposition has been vigorous only when the power plant is a metaphorical switch throw away.

Commentaries and reports suggest that two factors are largely behind why protests have come at such a late stage of the nuclear power plant construction.  The first was, understandably, the dramatic and eye-arresting catastrophic developments at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, after the devastating earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.  However, politicians and activists, more than experts themselves, seem to be ever ready to offer rhetorical doomsday scenarios of the Kudankulam reactor completely failing.   The second reason for the protests is quite conspiratorial: that foreign money is funding the protests.  Recently, a federal minister stated that "some organisations involved in the protests against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant had received funds to the tune of over Rs. 55 crore from “foreign sources.”" 

The Mullaperiyar and Kudankulam problems are representative of the resource challenges that India faces.  China, too, faces similar issues, but non-democratic politics in China means that rarely ever do such protests ever happen.  Even if they do, the authorities quickly put them out.  India, however, continues to struggle with these challenges through the ballot box, for which it deserves enormous sympathy and support.

But then, sometimes I wonder whether Mark Twain was cynical, or humorous, or being a realist, when he said “Only a government that is rich and safe can afford to be a democracy, for democracy is the most expensive and nefarious kind of government ever.”

Reading the classics. Not this way!

Two commentaries on the issue here and here

Hitchens v. Jon Stewart. Oh, why this, why now? :-)

So, here I was quite set to get back to watching The Daily Show's new season, and Christopher Hitchens spoils the party for me. Isn't Hitchens aware that the Daily Show and the Colbert Report are the hour of sanity for a few million, including me? :-)

So, what is Hitchens' problem with Stewart? Well, actually with Al Franken too. With the idea that these are satirists. Because, to Hitchens, a satirist has to be like Jonathan Swift.

“Al Franken for Senator” is one thing (especially when the alternative is or was “Norm Coleman for Senator”). But Jon Stewart for Samuel Langhorne Clemens is quite another. What next? Stephen Colbert for Zola? Al Franken for Swift?

Franken very often refers to himself as a “satirist,” which is a piece of hubris that comes to him too glibly and naturally. One wants to say, on hearing or reading such a claim, “Actually, sunshine, we’ll be the judge of that.” Swift famously compared satire to a mirror in which people could see every face but their own: if Franken desires to be considered a connoisseur of the satirical, he might want to paste that line into his hat.

I would never want to argue with Hitchens. He is like an uncle I had--the guy could quote verbatim from poems, religious texts, whatever, was fantastic with his repartee, but he was not the most loved person in the room either. But, no denying how smart that uncle was, and even smarter Hitchens is. And usually correct, as in his parting remarks:

Almost everything that I have quoted was printed or broadcast at a time when the Democrats were in opposition in both chambers and many state houses, excluded from the White House, and in a minority on the Supreme Court. The rebel humor on offer was rather lame even then. Shall we now be witnesses to a further decline? (This year’s African American lesbian comedian at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner broke bravely with tradition and chose to roast the absent Rush Limbaugh rather than the incumbent chief executive, to roars of complicit and knowing applause.) A liberal joke, at present, is no laughing matter.

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The end of Facebook?

Is Facebook doomed to someday become an online ghost town, run by zombie users who never update their pages and packs of marketers picking at the corpses of social circles they once hoped to exploit? Sad, if so. Though maybe fated, like the demise of a college clique.

Thus concludes Virginia Heffernan in the Sunday magazine of the NY Times.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, the death of Facebook is greatly exaggerated by commentators. But, I do wonder though what the next cool thing will be because, let us "face" it, Facebook is not cool anymore to the young crowds when even grandma and grandpa are out there. I don't know how Twitter will morph into anything other than how it currently is--I hate the idea of geocoding the twitterer's location.

I just can't wait for that next (r)evolution :)

Recession and job losses

Remember Mark Twain's comment on lies, damned lies, and statistics ....?
Compare for yourself the following charts:

Lies, damned lies, and 'eat locally'?

It's hard to open a magazine without finding an article about a photogenic farmer making handcrafted cheese or a happy family that has reduced its carbon footprint by planting a victory garden. ....
There are consequences, too, for oversimplifying. If we all think in food miles, the answer is obvious: Buy local. But new studies show that in some cases it can actually be more environmentally responsible to produce food far from home.

That is an excerpt from Jane Black's essay on how the press got the idea that food travels 1,500 miles from farm to plate. Worth reading the entire essay.

Students in my summer online class will be all too familiar with this topic because that is the task I gave them for the final 2000-word paper, and I have copied/pasted it here:

The Oxford University Press declared that the new word of the year for 2007 was "locavore", which perhaps you are already familiar with. A true commitment to being a locavore has implications for international trade and transportation.
In order to help you explore the issues, I had put together a few articles--on food miles--as readings for Week#6, which I am sure all of you have already read a gazillion times!

Your task:
* Carefully, and critically, read the five articles on food-miles.
* Think about related issues from Levinson and the mini-questions/responses.
* Articulate a thesis statement that relates to international trade and transportation. Provide this as the "abstract" in about 50-100 words.
* Develop your abstract with logical arguments, with supporting evidence from any number of materials used in this course. Make sure that you do not write a paper exploring a theme that is not quite central to this course. E.g., do not end up writing a paper on the farmers' market in Corvallis.
* You need to carve out your own thesis idea that relates to "locavore" and international trade and transportation.