Article 1 of the UN Convention to combat desertification defines land degradation as a “reduction or loss in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas of the biological or economic productivity and complexity of rain-fed cropland, irrigated cropland, or range, pasture, forest and woodlands resulting from land uses or from a process or combination of processes, including processes arising from human activities and habitation patterns, such as: (i) soil erosion caused by wind and / or water; (ii) deterioration of the physical, chemical, and biological and economic properties of soil; and (iii) long-term loss of natural vegetation” (Ministry of Environment & Forests, GoI, 2014).
Land can be said to be degraded when the soil suffers from decline or loss in its quality or productive capacity, whose causes can be natural or anthropic. When soil is degraded, it exhibits certain physical properties due to decline in soil structure such as erosion, desertification, anaerobism, compaction, crusting, and contamination due to pollutants.
Degraded soil also exhibits chemical properties such as fertility decline, salinization, acidification, leaching and decline in water retention. Degraded soil also has biological aspects and some of them include lessening of land biodiversity and decline in biomass carbon.
Land degradation occurs due to degradation processes that can be triggered by natural factors, which can be intrinsic such as climate, topography, vegetation and biological interactions or due to anthropic, or man-made causes. Anthropic causes for land degradation can be biophysical or socio-economic.
The biophysical causes include land use and management methods, which can range from agricultural practices such as use of pesticides to deforestation. The socioeconomic causes include issues related to the eocio-economic infrastructure directly and indirectly affecting soil quality, such as land tenure, health concerns and institutional support. Land degradation usually involves a combination these processes working in tandem.
Depending on the intrinsic properties of soil and other natural determinants such as climate and topography, soil can be highly resistant, stable, vulnerable or highly sensitive to degradation. It is estimated that one-sixth of the world’s soils have already been degraded by water and wind erosion.
This has two important consequences: a) the reduced ability of society to produce sufficient food due to loss of quality and depth of soils, and b) pollution associated with erosion.
Siltation of dams, pollution of water courses by agricultural chemicals and damage to property by soil laden runoff reduces the productive capacity of land.
The Ministry of Environment & Forests, GoI (2014) lists intensive agriculture, changes in land use, deforestation, encroachment and over-utilization of natural resources as the chief causes of land degradation.
These require sustainable land and ecosystem management. Although different methods of estimating total area of degraded land in India can lead to diverse results, the figures from different agencies have ranged between from between 55 to 188 million ha.
On June 17, 2016, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) released the Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of the entire country using Indian Remote Sensing Satellite (IRS) data in a Geographical Information System (GIS) environment.
The survey returned the result that out of a total of 96.40 Mha of land under desertification / land degradation in India in 2011-13, Rajasthan (21.53 Mha) had the highest portion of area with desertification / land degradation in 2011-13 while Sikkim (0.08 Mha) had the lowest.
The cumulative increase in desertification / land degradation between 2003-05 to 2011-13 in India was 1.87 Mha, or an increase by 0.57 per cent. The area of land converted from Degraded in 2003-05 to No Apparent Degradation in 2011-13 was 1.95 Mha.
The most startling statistic is the fact that 28.76 per cent of total land area in 2003-05 and 29.32 per cent of total land area in 2011-13 in India is land under desertification / degradation (ISRO, 2016), which is more than a quarter of the total land area in India.
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.