For the first time since the days of the Mahatma, an Indian
leader has appealed to the people of India to participate directly in
developing the country, and giving a helping hand to the poor. The Prime
Minister’s efforts are laudable, and require the full support of all citizens.
Unfortunately, unlike Gandhiji, he is unable to shame other leaders for their
lavish lifestyle or undeserved perks. Voices have been raised by the
middleclass that they see no reason for giving up their LPG gas subsidy when
parliamentarians are petty enough to hold on to every possible perk and benefit
at great public cost.
A recent NSSO report says that even today, in the seventh
decade after independence, two-thirds of rural households still use firewood
for cooking, and even the poorer third of urban families. Not only does this
ruin the eyes of women, as the Prime Minister so kindly pointed out, but kills
over half a million of them every year through respiratory diseases, besides
increasing carbon emissions, loss of forest cover, leaching of top soils, water
run-offs, floods, devastation, and enfeebling the roar of the tiger, which the
elite are delighted to hear. According
to the NSSO calculation, India might need to provide around 15 crore new LPG
connections, if we really want to help the poor. If all of the middleclass
generously and patriotically cooperate, they can help no more than 15% of poor
households, and that is no realistic solution. So what is to be done?
The Government of India earned international brownie points
by being the first to establish an independent ministry of renewable energy,
but after the applause abandoned it to light-weight politicians who needed a
ministerial berth. To make more sure that it would trouble no one anymore, a
web of rules and regulations have made its functioning opaque and unworkable.
Despite India being a sunshine subcontinent, the government
has done little other than ritualistic moves to promote solar energy.
Concentrated Thermal Solar Power units in the megawatt range have been set up
in several other countries, including the United States. Spain has over 50 such
units, while India is beginning a research project on this technology. Very few
of India’s six lakh villages place a demand higher than of 5 kw. Decentralised
PV solar units, locally managed by panchayati bodies or people’s associations
can help meet most of rural India’s energy needs, but this step could also lead
to sharing of some power democratically with the grassroots. However government
policy since its East India Company days, despite the ritualistic 73rd
and 74th amendments to the Constitution in support of such
democratic dispersal of power, has firmly believed in tight centralisation of
power. So, demand-side management of power needs, while commonplace in
developed countries, remains only a lecture room concept in India.
Perhaps, as a gesture towards India’s contribution to the
global struggle against climate change, the MNRE bodies like NEDCAP, or its Telangana
variant TNREDCL, could do aggressive marketing of the box-type and the
parabolic type of solar cookers. Large scale use of such cookers could save
everyone a lot of money and reduce firewood consumption by a third, if not by
half. It is not beyond the wits of our very clever bureaucrats and bankers to
devise a methodology to enable the poor to acquire these cookers and pay back
over time. But such sales will afford no profit to our corporate moghuls, or present
media-savvy photo ops to leaders. Helping the poor in small ways has not been any
leader’s priority, except when voicing his intention to do so at electioneering
times. And environment concerns are strictly relegated for international
conferences.
ONGC has put up huge placards in airports and other public
places in support of the Prime Minister’s call to you to give up your LPG
subsidy. This is the wealthiest public sector unit with annual profits in the
range of Rs 25,000 crores. Hence it has the capacity to think out new ways of
reducing public expenditure and our dependence on fossil fuels. Strangely,
despite the usual ritualistic directive that petrol should have 10% additive of
ethanol, little is done to achieve this. In fact sugar companies have a
disincentive to produce and sell ethanol since the government stipulated
purchase price is less than the market price offered by liquor companies for
the distillate. It is a known fact that since ethanol is easily miscible with
petrol, it could even form 25% of the fuel without affecting vehicle
performance. If India were to follow the example of Brazil, where all vehicles
run on pure ethanol or ethanol-mixes, several thousand crores of rupees in
foreign exchange could be saved. With that money, ONGC could give LPG cylinders
to at least a crore of poor households. Vehicle owners would be happy since the
cost of fuel would decrease, sugar companies would make better profits, consumer
price of sugar would be steady, and several crore farmers growing sugarcane
would have more sustainable incomes.
It would be surprising that the authorities are so reluctant
to follow the Brazilian path to bio-fuels when clearly so many sectors would
benefit. However, it seems the strong liquor lobby is against ethanol use since
it might push up the price of liquor they acquire from sugar mills. Governments
and politicians are sensitive to their pressure since excise taxes form the
greatest part of state revenues, apart from the profitable black market in this
industry. Here again well known technology exists which can easily increase
liquor production by a factor of ten if sugar companies would increase
distillates as balancing products when seasonally there is over production of
sugar, decreasing prices. Again, such management would benefit many sectors,
including sugarcane farmers who suffer periodically when sugar mills refuse
cane.
Such national refusal to utilise available technologies and
increase production of energy and profits would be inexplicable if not for the
attitudes that dictate decision making among the country’s elite. To take
advantage of the different ways of utilizing renewable energy resources the
elite must involve many small local and private bodies in decision making. They
are aware that this would be the first step in diluting their power, and they
refuse to do so. Their vested interest to retain control of the destinies of
the country in their own restricting hands makes them ideologically cling to
the platonic ideal of ‘philosopher kings’ who would benignly care for the
masses. Such an elitist ideology makes them spend unconscionable sums on
nuclear energy, which even after several decades has produced very little
energy while continuing to pose for millennia a
threat to all life, even under the best of management conditions. Plato
conceived his philosophy 2500 years ago when Greeks depended on the work of
four slaves for every free man. It is a vast pity that our elite believe in
such antiquated ideas stifling progress, and reducing the living standards of
the great majority to no better than that of semi-serfdom.
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