For all of us in the 21st century, Bastar is a landscape of forests, tribals and a bloody battleground for security forces and the armed insurgents known as Maoists. One way, it is a landscape of perceptions. Unless one ventures into this area in Chhattisgarh.
From Jagdalpur to Dantewada, the road meanders through dense sal forests. Often wild fruit-bearing trees and medicinal plants appear. Posts of the Central Reserve Police Force are visible within short distances of each other. People generally refuse to go to these places after daylight.
Of the many fallouts of insurgency a critical one is the way it has affected the lives of some of India’s poorest people—the adivasis predominant in this area. Stories of their everyday life, their needs and aspirations have been subsumed into the dominant narrative of insurgency. Pressing issues of malnutrition, healthcare, clean water and education have largely remained on the sidelines.
First sprouts of life
Bastar’s geography is its history. Apparently, some three billion years ago life took shape here. The plant and tree species we see now are ancestors to the first sprouts of life in what we call India. It was still a separate geological plate and India at that point of time did not look like what it is today. The tribals were not there but the plants and trees were busy preparing the ground for them to appear much later.
Bastar has that fabled Abujmarh, or the unknown hills, covered with 3,900 square kilometres of forests. It was only in 2009 that the government opened access to these hills. They were out of bounds since the 1980s. It is arguably the place where one can experience pre-agriculture life. The forests host tribes like the Gonds, who do not have a word for “future” and “breakdown”. Many of the tribes have numbers only till seven. It is a life that existed more than 10,000 years ago.
The red irony
Bacheli, one of the two most important iron ore-mining sites of the National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) is in Dantewada. Bacheli lies in the foothills of the Bailadila Range, an ecological hot spot and famous for its high-quality iron ore deposits. The corporation has been mining iron ore in Bailadila since the early 1960s. At present, it has five operational leases spreading over 2,553 hectares of forested area. In 2015-16, it earned a royalty of Rs 577 crore. Last year, the earning was Rs 953 crore, says District Commissioner Saurabh Kumar. The district has enjoyed such handsome earnings for years now.
But the richness of the red ore has escaped a large section of the population here. On the main road through Bacheli, a signboard boasting “Indian Coffee House” points in the direction of NMDC township, a pocket of affluence. Just on the other side, a few kilometers inside, people walk a considerable distance for a pot of water.
People in the region do not trust the quality of water in the hand pumps. Instead, they rely on the stream water brought by pipelines. A common sight in Parapur, a sparsely populated tribal village in Bacheli, is women with handis (pots) on their heads going to fetch water.
Only about two per cent of the rural households have access to treated tap water in Dantewada. As per official data, 84 per cent households in the region “rely” on hand pumps. But the hand pumps in the village are mostly non-functional. Wherever the hand pumps are functional, people are apprehensive of the quality of the water. They fear the reddish water contaminated with iron ore.
Dantewada has only 11 PHCs for a population of 533,638, of which 82 per cent is rural. This means there is roughly one PHC per 48,500 people. Even these few centres rarely have full time doctors.
Equally challenging is the health and nutrition support to children and women in the villages. “While there are anganwadi centres, nutrition education among the workers and the monitoring of nutrition and growth are not up to the mark,” .
Rapid Survey on Children by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, in Chhattisgarh, about 38 per cent of tribal children below five years are underweight, while 44 per cent suffer stunted growth, it reads.
Home is where the school is not
Staying in school hostels set up by the government in and around the bigger villages and town centres is an accepted way of life for many children in Bastar today.Schools in interior villages are sparse. “Even where there are buildings, a major problem is the availability of teachers.
Middle schools are a bigger challenge. “Typically, children have to walk about 5 km to reach middle schools. In the hilly terrain that is difficul.Another problem is that children drop out of school by the time they graduate to middle school. The teachers in these schools are mostly non-tribals from other places. They teach in Hindi. They do not know the Gondi and Halvi languages that the children speak. This hinders learning and also creates a sense of uneasiness.
The safe havens for children are being created at a distance, so children have to leave home.
The gloomy statistics notwithstanding, the people here must be cherishing hope. A striking thing about the tribals is how beautifully they paint their life after death. In the graveyards in the villages and along the roads, some of the tombs, particularly of tribal leaders or significant people, have rich and detailed engravings—their portrait, politics, favourite habits.
They seem to nurture life in death. One can paint death so beautifully only if the life is rich, if there is hope.
An opportunity?
The conflict in the Bastar region is also a conflict of resource rights. For years people in this region knew that the resource beneath their land is of someone else: sometimes the state, sometimes the mining corporation. They felt alienated, suffered unequal development and fought for their rights.
Finally, the government has recognised the right of the people over resources. To this effect, in March 2015, Parliament passed an Amendment to the Central mining law, the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act of 1957. One of the key provisions of the amendments is the institution of District Mineral Foundation (DMF), a non-profit Trust, to be developed in all mining districts of India. DMFs are meant as a vehicle for ensuring that the benefits of mining are shared with the people of the region.
They must address crucial human development factors such as nutrition, healthcare, clean water, sanitation, education. Mining companies will have to give DMF a share of the royalty they pay to the state government.
For the government this is a momentous opportunity to reach out to the remote parts of Bastar. It is an opportunity to seek a renewed contract with the people of the region, an opportunity to write a history of renewed hope.
Local festivals: Celebrations are typically oriented around nature and harvest, such as pane pandum (before sowing paddy seeds in May and giving thanks for the new crops in November) and gadi pandum (before picking the mahua flower).
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.
Globally, around 80% of wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused, according to the United Nations.
This can pose a significant environmental and health threat.
In the absence of cost-effective, sustainable, disruptive water management solutions, about 70% of sewage is discharged untreated into India’s water bodies.
A staggering 21% of diseases are caused by contaminated water in India, according to the World Bank, and one in five children die before their fifth birthday because of poor sanitation and hygiene conditions, according to Startup India.
As we confront these public health challenges emerging out of environmental concerns, expanding the scope of public health/environmental engineering science becomes pivotal.
For India to achieve its sustainable development goals of clean water and sanitation and to address the growing demands for water consumption and preservation of both surface water bodies and groundwater resources, it is essential to find and implement innovative ways of treating wastewater.
It is in this context why the specialised cadre of public health engineers, also known as sanitation engineers or environmental engineers, is best suited to provide the growing urban and rural water supply and to manage solid waste and wastewater.
Traditionally, engineering and public health have been understood as different fields.
Currently in India, civil engineering incorporates a course or two on environmental engineering for students to learn about wastewater management as a part of their pre-service and in-service training.
Most often, civil engineers do not have adequate skills to address public health problems. And public health professionals do not have adequate engineering skills.
India aims to supply 55 litres of water per person per day by 2024 under its Jal Jeevan Mission to install functional household tap connections.
The goal of reaching every rural household with functional tap water can be achieved in a sustainable and resilient manner only if the cadre of public health engineers is expanded and strengthened.
In India, public health engineering is executed by the Public Works Department or by health officials.
This differs from international trends. To manage a wastewater treatment plant in Europe, for example, a candidate must specialise in wastewater engineering.
Furthermore, public health engineering should be developed as an interdisciplinary field. Engineers can significantly contribute to public health in defining what is possible, identifying limitations, and shaping workable solutions with a problem-solving approach.
Similarly, public health professionals can contribute to engineering through well-researched understanding of health issues, measured risks and how course correction can be initiated.
Once both meet, a public health engineer can identify a health risk, work on developing concrete solutions such as new health and safety practices or specialised equipment, in order to correct the safety concern..
There is no doubt that the majority of diseases are water-related, transmitted through consumption of contaminated water, vectors breeding in stagnated water, or lack of adequate quantity of good quality water for proper personal hygiene.
Diseases cannot be contained unless we provide good quality and adequate quantity of water. Most of the world’s diseases can be prevented by considering this.
Training our young minds towards creating sustainable water management systems would be the first step.
Currently, institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) are considering initiating public health engineering as a separate discipline.
To leverage this opportunity even further, India needs to scale up in the same direction.