Akshit Sangomla

If India’s Power Sector Goes Coal All the Way, Then Disaster Awaits

If India builds all its proposed coal-based power plants, then it might not fulfil its promise made under the Paris climate agreement.

India seems to be headed towards a collision between its energy development ambitions and climate goals.

Credit: SD-Pictures/pixabay

If India builds all its proposed coal-based power plants, then it might not fulfil its promise made under the Paris climate agreement, a recent study conducted by University of California, Irvine (UCI), and CoalSwarm, a coal-tracking portal, has found.

To this day, 144 nations have signed the Paris climate agreement and it came into effect in November 2016. It aims to limit global temperature rise to under 2° C above what it was between 1850 and 1890 by the end of this century. A more ambitious target, of limiting the rise to under 1.5°C , doesn’t look likely anymore.

Each signatory to the agreement has had to declare its actions and goals to meet the terms through the so-called intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs). These actions include a slew of measures to bring down the emission of greenhouse gases – especially carbon dioxide – that warm the globe and drastically alter the climate.

As part of its INDC, India aims to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide released per unit of GDP by 35% of the amount emitted in 2005. The country is currently the fourth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, and its largely-coal-based energy sector contributes two-thirds of those emissions.

Moreover, coal based power plants emit 41% of all carbon dioxide released by human activities, making them the largest carbon dioxide emitters on Earth. At the same time, India also needs this energy to build its infrastructure and improve its citizens’ standard of living.

According to the study, published in the journal Earth’s Future on April 25, India has planned 370 coal-based power plants to be switched on by 2025 or sooner. They have a collective capacity of 243 GW. While 65 GW’s worth of them are under construction, 178 GW are still in the planning stage.

If the 2º C threshold agreed upon at Paris is breached, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has predicted that those already living in poverty will be ‘most vulnerable’ to these changes. India is home to a globally significant fraction of these people.

And all of this is assuming ‘2º C’ is some kind of lakshman rekha holding calamity at bay – which is not the case because the threshold is not entirely scientific and said calamity could ensue much before the planet warms by that much (on average). Moreover, according to Nagraj Adve, an expert on global warming, the planet’s already on course to warming by 1.7º C.

Steven Davis, an associate professor at UCI and coauthor of the study, said in a statement that India’s dilemma was “of its own making”, and adding, “The country has vowed to curtail its use of fossil fuels in electricity generation but it has also put itself on a path to building hundreds of coal-burning power plants to feed its growing industrial economy.”

The study estimates that if all the proposed plants are built, India will have 123% more power generated from coal than it does today. Next, if it also meets 40% of the country’s power demand from renewable sources of energy, then India will be officially producing more power than it needs. As a result, many power plants will have to sit idle, precipitating financial losses and wasted resources. The researchers peg these losses at Rs 1.2-15.37 lakh crore (depending on the capacity at which the plants run). According to their paper, 30 GW’s worth of coal plants had already been stranded due to lack of demand in June 2016.

While agreeing with the broad points that the study makes, Adve isn’t sure about the underlying assumptions. “The fact that India has proposed 178 GW [of coal plants] does not mean they will necessarily be built,” he told The Wire. He also pointed out that India has made tall claims of expanding nuclear energy’s share in power generation in its INDC but that it will not be able to realise them.

In the same statement, Christine Shearer, a senior researcher at CoalSwarm, said that the proposed coal plants are “already incompatible” with India’s INDC and “simply unneeded”. Her group found that if power demand in the country grew by 7%, in line with the government’s projections, and the plants run 65% of the time, then India will not meet its goals. If it wants to, then power demand growth will have to be kept to 6% and the plants, running at 75%.

Adve questioned such conclusions: “India’s commitments are not very ambitious, and it has already reduced its emissions intensity by 12%.” He believed that India should be able “to meet its target without much exertion” because more efficient energy technologies will arise in modernising economies. He also advised against putting the onus solely on India “given the levels of coal production and use in US and China”.

The use of high-quality coal and cutting-edge technology can make those power plants that are already in use more efficient and help cut their emissions. Currently, only 4% of the proposed plants are equipped to operate at high efficiencies, consume less fuel and emit less carbon dioxide. The rest are either super-critical or subcritical plants.

With New System in Hand, IMD Predicts Normal Monsoon for 2017

Having been criticised in the past for failing to predict the monsoons correctly, IMD has said it has now improved its system.

Monsoon clouds near Nagercoil. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

New Delhi: The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted a normal southwest monsoon for 2017. IMD director general K.J. Ramesh announced in a press conference on April 18 that there would be a good distribution of rainfall across the country, which augurs well for the farming community and the country’s economy. The southwest monsoon, which begins in June and lasts till September, is responsible for 70% of the annual rainfall in India.

“Quantitatively, the monsoon seasonal rainfall is likely to be 96% of the long-period average (LPA) with an error of ±5%,” Ramesh said. The LPA is calculated from the data for received rainfall between 1951 and 2000. Anything between 96-104% of the LPA is considered ‘normal’. Anything under 96% is considered ‘below normal’ and 104-110% of the LPA is ‘above normal’.

The IMD has also calculated a 38% probability for a near-normal monsoon this year. But in a departure from tradition, it has not published the probabilities for below-normal and deficient monsoons. Ramesh said that these predictions will be made in a second-stage assessment in June. He reasoned that the uncertainties arising out of changing sea surface temperature conditions warranted a closer monitoring.

The department has used two different forecast models for monsoon assessment this year. “Both the statistical ensemble forecasting system and the monsoon mission coupled forecasting system have arrived at the same number of 96%,” Ramesh explained.

Skymet Weather, a private company that publishes weather forecasts, had predicted a below-normal monsoon at 95% of the LPA in March this year.

On the matter of global weather anomalies like the El Niño and Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), which have an affect on the monsoons every year, the IMD said the outlook has been positive. Currently, both the El Niño, which occurs over the Pacific Ocean, and the IOD conditions are neutral and are likely to become mild over the next few months. Ramesh said that if both events occur together then they would offset each other, bringing in a normal monsoon.

Skymet, on the other hand, has said that the El Niño will be the major factor for the below-normal monsoon that it has predicted.

The IMD will come out with the distribution of rainfall for different regions of the country and on a per-month basis in its June assessment. The onset of monsoon over Kerala will be announced around the third week of May.

Last year, the IMD had made an initial forecast of above-normal rainfall but the season ended with normal precipitation. Moreover, the southern peninsula had registered less-than-predicted rainfall, with several parts of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala reeling under drought-like conditions. Ramesh attributed this to a below-normal northeast monsoon.

According to The Hindu, the IMD has, in the past few years, got its predictions about monsoons wrong 70% of the time, even if the then-director general had remained positive about the purpose of IMD’s predictions. M.S. Swaminathan, the eponymous head of the rural development foundation, had said “IMD forecasts do not provide much insight into the spatial distribution patterns of the rain and that is where they need to improve their services.” Frontline has also reported that its forecast presents irrelevant information.

Possibly in an effort to counter these criticisms, the IMD has this year made in-house changes to the adopted ‘coupled forecasting system’ under it’s monsoon mission. D.S. Pai, of the climate prediction group at IMD Pune, said that an improved version of this system – first used by the National Centres for Environmental Prediction in the US in 2012 – will help the department make better sense of the monsoons’ coming.

(With PTI inputs)

Timeline: North Korea’s Nuclear and Missile Tests

The latest of North Korea’s missile tests came on April 5, when it fired ballistic missiles into the sea off its east coast.

North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un guides the Korean People’s Army Tank Crews’ Competition 2017 in this undated photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang on April 1, 2017. Credit: Reuters

The complete history of North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests, from August 1998 to the most recent one earlier this month.

(With inputs from Reuters)

Month After ABVP Violence, Ramjas College Cancels Four Plays on Theme of Nationalism

The censored event, Mukhatib, got converted to a space of silent protest, vibrant discussion, songs and poetry.

Students of Ramjas College during their protest march against ABVP violence at North Campus in New Delhi on February 28. Credit: PTI

New Delhi: Delhi University’s Ramjas college is in the eye of the storm yet again. According to the students involved with ‘Mukhatib’, Ramjas’s annual street play festival, four of the plays to be performed on campus on Friday were cancelled by the college authorities.

“The event that took place today got converted to a space of silent protest and vibrant discussion,” a member of ‘Shunya’, the dramatics society of Ramjas which conducted the event told The Wire. According to the student, the police and the authorities sought to hush up even this “peaceful, harmless session”.

The organising group which was preparing for the event on March 31 was called for an emergency meeting on Thursday evening by acting principal P.C. Tulsian. He questioned the students about the content of the plays to be performed the next day. He apparently told them that he had news from the outside that the content of some of the plays was not appropriate.

A member of the dramatics society that The Wire spoke to said, “The dramatics society has been conducting the event for many years now and the content of our plays has never been screened.”

A group of professors, which included the extra curricular activities convener Reetu Sharma, got the students to read out the synopses of the seven shortlisted plays. Four of the plays which centred around the theme of nationalism and the present quelling of dissent in university spaces were deemed controversial by the teachers and the students were told not to stage them. To add to the intrigue, a member of Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) who was involved in the violent incidents at Ramjas on February 21 and 22 was also present in the room. When students from the dramatics society protested, he said that he was invited by the principal.

The students were further asked to give an undertaking that they will not deviate from the submitted scripts. The fact that they had not disclosed the content of the plays to the authorities beforehand was also mentioned.

“The organisers as a collective decided that some sort of protest needed to be registered at the event,” the society member told The Wire. “But considering the present situation of a pervading sense of violence, we decided that we will have to do it smartly,” he added.

SGTB Khalsa college students sitting with mouths taped on stage during their play. Credit: Member of dramatics society, Ramjas college.

The event started off on time. The performers of the first play, The Trump Card, by SGTB Khalsa college sat with their mouths taped, silently on the stage. The ECA convener and the principal were in the audience watching everything closely. The former came in at this point and asked the students about this “deviation from the script”.

Kirorimal college next performed its play, Ek Aur Durghatna and Lady Shri Ram college called off its performance, Ek Shunya Nau Char, in protest. Representatives from both groups then spoke about the ongoing silencing of voices and the fact that their competitors were not allowed to perform.

After all this, when the students were sitting, singing, discussing, jamming and reading poetry, they were told to wrap things up by the authorities. All this happened in the presence of police personnel. The students also alleged that a few ABVP members sat in the audience as the plays were performed. ‘We felt the gaze of the state creep up on us all through”, said one student

According to a Facebook post by a student who was present at the event, “Some of the [dramatics society] members tried to talk but the teachers were adamant. Next moment, the police asked the dhol walas to stop.”

A ‘Matter of Right(s)’: Films and Conversations on Human Rights

A film festival seeks to generate debates about human rights abuses around the world and their impact on human lives.

Matter of Rights. (L-R) DU professor Subarno Chattarji, CHRI director Sanjoy Hazarika, filmmaker Harshawardhan Varma, filmmaker Utpal Borpujari, filmmaker Abir Bazaz, CHRI manager Mohan Sundaram. Credit: Samarth Pathak

New Delhi: “Why have arms and nuclear bombs been created?,” asked an elderly man sitting on the bank of a river, his voice tinged with anger. After a short silence and no response from the other person, pat came his statement, “To kill human beings”.

Then he asked, “Who will kill human beings?… Human beings themselves.”

“Who have made these?…Human beings have…to protect themselves from human beings.”

Now a wry smile came upon the man’s face. The sorrow behind the smile quite apparent.

Through this iterative dialogue Sirajuddin was perhaps trying to understand the horrors inflicted on his family during the Nellie massacre on February 18, 1983 in Assam. He lost his parents and four daughters along with 47 members of his extended family that day. While official figures put the death toll at 1800, unofficial figures said that between 3000-4000 had died during the massacre.

I met Sirajuddin through a screening of Subasri Krishnan’s film What the Fields Remember on March 25. It was one of a dozen critically-acclaimed films and documentaries from India and abroad showcased at the Matter of Right(s) film festival at the English department of Delhi University’s faculty of arts on March 24-25.

The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) organised the two-day event in association with the English department and Centre for Studies in Violence, Memory and Trauma at DU and Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research at Jamia Millia Islamia. Another leg of the event took place at Jamia on March 27.

Sanjoy Hazarika, director of CHRI, told The Wire, “We are hosting this film festival to mark CHRI’s 30th anniversary, and in continuation of Commonwealth Day celebrations. We hope this will be an annual feature and if possible (we) would like to make it a traveling festival”.

On the motivation behind the film festival Hazarika said, “Films are easier to absorb for people than heavy prose.”

“We have to show them something that they can access, understand and think upon,” he said pointing towards a sheet of paper stuck on a window with the word ‘Think’ written on it.

Samarth Pathak who leads CHRI’s public outreach told The Wire over email that the event was organised in order “to generate debate around human rights abuses around the world and their impact on human lives”.

Following the screening of What the Fields Remember, Hazarika narrated his experience reporting the aftermath of the Nellie massacre with a group of journalists from across the world.

“At first nothing was visible. We even thought if something had actually happened,” he said. But then the group came across a young man who had survived the attack. He took them close to a stream where bodies had been dumped into mass graves.

“We walked up an embankment where an entire family was laid out. The youngest infant had been beheaded,” Hazarika said poignantly. “At that moment, watching the sight of brutality, I made up my mind about helping out people who were victims of such torture.”

Hazarika stated that nothing of that scale had ever been witnessed in India. According to the young survivor only a few guns were available so neighbours had used spears, bows and arrows and machetes for killing their neighbours.

According to Hazarika, some of the perpetrators were arrested and interrogated in the days that followed. When asked what had happened to them, they simply said that an evil wind had come over them and had made them do what they did.

Also read: And Quiet Flows the Kopili

Other films screened at the festival were Candles in the Wind by Kavita Bahl and Nandan Saxena, Le Cas Pinochet (The Pinochet Case) by P. Guzman, Rambuai by Maulee Senapati and Diamantes Negros (Black Diamonds) by Miguel Alcantud.

Eminent filmmaker Mike Pandey’s film Not My Life was also screened at the festival. Not My Life documents human trafficking across 13 countries including Brazil, Cambodia, Ghana and India, and focuses on multiple forms of modern slavery, such as forced labour and sex trafficking.

In a post screening discussion with Hazarika, Pandey urged the youth to be “change agents”.

“Trafficking is a huge issue globally, and is a $120 billion industry. The film seeks to stir people into thinking what we as human beings are doing to each other. It hurts me to see that as thinking human beings we allow such travesties to happen. Instead of being self-consumed, we should think about those around us,” he told the audience.

(L-R) filmmaker Mike Pandey, filmmaker Harshawardhan Varma, CHRI director Sanjoy Hazarika, CHRI senior advisor Maja Daruwala. Credit: Samarth Pathak

Paradise on a River of Hell by Abir Bazaz and Meenu Gaur was the last film to be screened at the festival. The film talked about the violent events that unfolded in the Kashmir Valley in early 1990, the victims of which, Bazaz and his family among them, have not yet found closure.

During the closing panel discussion, moderated by filmmaker Harshawardhan Varma, Bazaz found it was sad that his film, made in 2002, remains relevant 15 years later.

DU professor Subarno Chattarji asked Bazaz about the politics of deep nostalgia depicted in his film. He replied that there was a politics of hope in nostalgia which he himself does not feel. But said that the film still had it. He wanted to be hopeful about the future but was not. Bazaz now teaches literature at the University of Minnesota.

During the discussion, filmmaker and critic Utpal Borpujari said, “people often misunderstand human rights as everything to do with the state.”

According to him the issues went much deeper. He then talked about the relevance of Bimal Roy’s Do Bhiga Zamin in today’s mass migration to the big cities. He further listed various contemporary films that throw light on human rights.

Participants also discussed how university spaces are important places for the continuation of discourse on human rights issues, especially in “an era where dissent is dumbed and psyche is numbed,” as Pathak described it.

To reiterate the importance of dialogue, Hazarika said, “Violence can never replace conversation. The fact that somebody is resorting to violence shows the weakness of their argument”.

DU College Allegedly Pulls Support For Student Newspaper Over Ramjas Article

The students of Delhi College of Arts and Commerce are now bringing out the magazine with their own funds and under a new name.

DCAC has pulled out support for a student newspaper. Credit: DU admissions

New Delhi: Delhi College of Arts and Commerce (DCAC) has pulled out support for the publication of its student newspaper, Critique, students have said. The move came after the cancellation of the college’s annual fest, Scoop, where it was to be launched. BJP MP Subramaniam Swamy was to be chief guest at the event. The college also recently cancelled or postponed events where Swaraj Abhiyan chief Yogendra Yadav and journalist Hartosh Singh Bal were to speak.

According to a DNA report, members of the organising committee said that the fest had been cancelled because “authorities did not find the atmosphere to be appropriate for conducting such an event”.

Talking to The Wire, a student associated with the newspaper said that the student body is now bringing out the newspaper with their own funds, keeping all its content, under a new name, Yatharth.

The DCAC student that The Wire spoke to stated that the newspaper was slated to go in spite of the event being cancelled until the principal, Rajiv Chopra, wanted a particular article removed from the newspaper. The student said that the principal had a problem with the article as it had references to Ramjas College, RSS-BJP backed student organisation ABVP and CPI(M-L) backed AISA. The article was about recent incidents at Ramjas and Delhi University, which had spiralled into a major fracas fuelling a debate on the freedom of expression on college campuses and the political violence and strong-arming of the ABVP.

The student said that the article was neither politically inclined nor ideologically motivated. “It objectively reported on the facts about the Ramjas incident and this was conveyed to the college principal but he still refused to carry the article.”

The student said that the principal asked them to publish the newspaper under two conditions: either the contentious article was to be removed or all references to the college and its faculty was to be taken out of the newspaper. In response to this, DCAC’s journalism students have decided to publish it unofficially, with a few copies distributed among students. Students said that they decided on this after their repeated requests to the principal went unheeded and the paucity of funds to print more copies.

The college principal, Chopra, told The Wire that he was given the newspaper for review on Wednesday morning and needs more time to vet its contents. On being asked about the contentious article, he stated that “he did not have an issue with any article”. Students, however, insisted that the college had set the conditions given above.

This incident adds to the atmosphere of fear being created on college campuses around the country with events being cancelled or postponed to evade prospective violence.

ABVP Disrupts, Vandalises Literary Event at Ramjas College

In a further blow to freedom of speech and expression on campus, another university has ended up surrendering its rights in the face of a naked display of right-wing political aggression.

The chaos at Ramjas today. Credit: Facebook

New Delhi: Members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) – the student group affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – disrupted a literature event organised by the English department of Ramjas college in Delhi University on Tuesday. They also vandalised the premises and threatened students and professors with dire consequences if they went ahead with their programme , something that Mukul Mangalik, a professor of history at the college, calls unprecedented.

In the face of the ABVP’s violence, the session in question, ‘Cultures of Protest’, featuring film maker Sanjay Kak, JNU professor Bimol Akoijam and JNU Phd. scholar Umar Khalid as speakers was eventually called off.

Trouble started in the morning itself when a group of ABVP members reached the Ramjas campus and started protesting the invitation to Umar Khalid. They threatened the organisers with violence if the JNU student entered campus. The authorities, including college principal Rajendra Prasad and Mangalik, tried to reason with the protesting group but eventually gave up; fearing for the safety of everyone present, Khalid then turned back.

“Several colleges had denied permission to let Khalid speak at their campus events” Prasad later said.

Students took out a peaceful rally at Ramjas college. Credit: Facebook

Students took out a peaceful rally at Ramjas college. Credit: Ananya Vajpeyi

Upset by this strong-arming, a part of the student community attending the session subsequently decided to make a statement by taking out a peaceful demonstration in support of the constitutional right to freedom of expression. The rally was taken out within the campus and when it returned to the venue, the situation grew ugly. ABVP members were waiting for the contingent in front of the canteen on the ground floor of the building which had the venue of the literature event on the first floor. Another group was standing on the terrace. Both the ABVP groups started shouting slogans like ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ and ‘Vande Mataram’ and the ones on the terrace started throwing stones and tree branches. One of the students got injured in the process.

The policemen present at the spot for the entire period tried their best to control the growing mob which Mangalik estimated ran to about 100-150 persons by the end. The police were able to escort the students and professors to the venue by creating a cordon but the students felt that the police could have done more to control the group they described as goons.

The session carried on with the rest of the speakers while ABVP members sloganeered outside. But this was not the end of things. Vivek Lohiya, a student attending the event said that a large stone smashed one of the windows and came into the conference hall. The students, most of whom had never been involved with student politics, panicked when the lights of the room also went off. Locked inside the darkened room with a slogan-shouting, jeering crowd outside, several students described the situation as intensely intimidating.

At this point the police had to intervene and asked the organisers to call off the event.

In a Facebook post, Umar Khalid wrote about the event, “But the most fitting response we can give to these fascists is by fearlessly organising more such programs, seminars, screening and protests.”

Mukul Mangalik called the entire turn of events a tragedy as the professors and students who had assembled for a peaceful cultural dialogue had to be evicted through a back alley. All this while, the ABVP group continued unabashed with their slogans and abuses, including threats of violence and rape against the female students. What happened today, Mangalik told The Wire, “is not just about one person or one event but an aggressive assault on the liberal traditions enshrined in our constitution, embodied by our institutions.”