The world is pursuing a path of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation, keys to human development. India is walking the same track, targeting a five trillion economy in the near future.
We expect higher GDP, better economic status and a high standard of living like other developed countries. However, linear infrastructure does not always propel growth and holds negative implications. Often development comes at an ecological cost.
Indian Railway’s expansion into the hinterlands
In the current scenario, the Indian government is focusing on linear infrastructure development across the nation. The commissioning of new railway lines is also being done at a faster pace.
Railways connect India rapidly, with a 59 per cent increase in the average pace of commissioning new lines from 4.1 (2009-14) to 6.53 km per day (2014-18). In addition to our current railway network, the Indian government in 2006 established a new subsidiary, the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited (DFCCIL) that upholds a motto of sincerity, speed and success.
At present, the Indian Railways run a mixed corridor where mail/express/passenger trains and freight trains share the same track. While freight traffic is the bread and butter for the Indian Railways, mail/express/passenger trains invariably take precedence over freight (Corporate Plan, DFCCIL 2020).
With this in view, the Railway Ministry proposed a dedicated freight corridor that will run separately on a dedicated track. Accordingly, the DFCCIL claims that freight trains would now be able to move at a speed of 100 km per hour.
By 2024, DFCCIL proposes to lay a 3365 km track connecting north to south and west to east (Corporate Plan, DFCCIL 2020). However, the downside is that such sanctioned and proposed corridors will pass through different forest patches of different states and compromise animal safety.
As per a 2019 RTI report received from the Ministry of Railways, railway lines currently pass through 19 protected areas, including national parks, sanctuaries, elephant reserves, and tiger reserves. The details are given below:-
| Railway Lines Running Through Protected Areas | |
| Railway Line | Forests/Parks/Tiger Reserves/Sanctuaries |
| Alipurduar – Siliguri | Jaldapara, Gorumara, Mahananda WLS |
| East Central Railway (Bihar-UP line) | Valmiki Tiger Reserve |
| Kansiya nes – Sasan Gir metre gauge | Gir sanctuary |
| Alipurduar – Siliguri | Jaldapara, Gorumara, Mahananda WLS |
| Raiwala-Dehradun | Rajaji National park |
| Dhanbad division | Betla national park |
| Nagpur division | Reserve forest, malewada |
| Junagadh-Bilkha | Gir sanctuary |
| Madukarai-Kanjikode section | Walayar range, palakkad forest |
| Gondia-Chanda fort | Nagzira, Navegaon and Tadoba |
| Balaghat – Jabalpur | Kanha range |
| Nagpur – Chhindwara | Pench range, sillewani forest |
| Nagpur – Durg | Nagzira RF, Dandakara RF, Dakshin bortalao range |
| Nainpur – Chhindwara | Pench range |
| Joranda – Dhenkanal | Dhenakanal forest |
| Sitabinj – Harichandanpur | Harichandanpur reserve forest |
| Rouli – Tikiri | The Eastern Ghats, Rayagda hills |
| Kakrigumma – Koraput | The Eastern Ghats, Rayagda hills |
| Titlagarh-Singapuram road | Kotgarh elephant reserve, Niyamgiri |
The newly proposed tracks by DFCCIL will have a doubled Hospet-Tinaighat-Vasco line passing through Goa’s Bhagwan Mahaveer Sanctuary.
Karnataka’s Dandeli sanctuary, Lucknow-Pilibhit gauge conversion will increase construction and consequently traffic inside the Pilibhit tiger reserve in Uttar Pradesh.
Similarly, a dedicated freight corridor passes through Gautam Buddha WLS of Bihar and Koderma WLS of Jharkhand.
India’s environment ministry recently exempted 13 pending railway projects worth INR 19,400 crore (2.8 billion USD) and spread over 800 hectares of land from seeking forest permits. These clearances could adversely impact the national park, tiger reserve, tiger corridor, and wildlife sanctuaries across Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, and Goa. It is expected that more protected areas are likely to see railway lines in and around them soon.
The repercussion of Railway expansion on wildlife
The Indian railways’ ministry claims that as many as 35,732 animals were killed on the railway tracks in the last four years. All in all, every day, 31 animals die on the tracks.
In many states, railway lines passing through elephant habitats have led to accidents and the death of 249 elephants during 1987 and 2018.
Since 1987, 18 elephants have been killed in train accidents only in Rajaji National Park. Recent statistics show that elephant mortality due to train hit is ranked third, after electrocution and poaching.
In overall elephant deaths due to anthropogenic causes, rail contributes to almost 12 per cent of India’s total elephant mortality.
According to the official data, the number has been continuously increasing year after year.
The judicious amalgamation of development and conservation
The web of railway tracks will cross through more protected areas and undoubtedly cause more mortality in the coming days. We cannot limit expansion because it would jeopardise the nation’s welfare, but we cannot sacrifice the lives of protected and endangered species to increase the nation’s GDP.
Such a critical situation demands a better strategy in which both development and conservation can go hand in hand. Some key measures have been proposed to balance conservation and development. It is perhaps time to reflect upon them and promise their inclusion at totality.
A. Passage through dense forest should be avoided if an alternative route is available
On several occasions, railway agencies choose the alignment that passes through the protected area to reduce the railway track’s length, thereby lowering the project cost. They do this despite knowing that another alternative route is available. However, such an alternative would cost more.
While deciding on the selection of route, agencies must keep in mind that the cost of an animal’s life is far greater than the project’s cost. The right decision might save species’ lives and subsequently help them maintain ecological balance. Economic non-viability should not be cited as a reason for non-ecological viability.
B. Imposing restriction on the speed of the trains passing through the dense forest areas
Speed kills both humans and wildlife in different ways. Unfortunately, there are no prescriptions in any rule/act/policy/guidelines on the exact speed limit to be followed by the Indian railways while passing through dense forests/protected areas/critical wildlife habitats.
This is the most contentious and critical point in terms of wildlife conservation. As per a 2016 report, 1200 trains run through India’s protected area, which poses a grave danger to its sensitive wildlife. Evidence from research suggests that a restricted speed limit for trains in dense forests is an effective mitigation strategy to avoid incidental mortalities.
It has been shown that an increase in the speed limit of the train caused more elephant fatalities due to the elephant–train collision. Different committees constituted on mitigation measures also suggest a speed limit of 20 km within the protected area.
Other studies reveal that the frequency of wild animal fatalities is much higher during the night than during the day and hence suggested the restriction on railway movement on the tracks that is passing through the forested area in between 7 pm to 6 am.
The concerned authorities have proposed no pre-defined speed limit applied throughout Indian PAs regardless of their protection status (whether it is a Sanctuary, National Park, or Tiger Reserve).
A Uttarakhand HC order of 2016 states that trains need to run at 30 km per hour while passing through national parks. The 34th meeting of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) in 2015 also mandated that trains passing through a tiger reserve must travel at a maximum speed of 35 kmph at night and 40 kmph during the day.
In 2013, public interest litigation (Shakti Prasad Nayak Vs Union of India) was filed in the honorable Supreme Court regarding the train’s speed restriction. The Supreme Court passed a Judgement in 2014 on this writ petition, ordering speed restrictions to be strictly followed by trains of Indian Railways passing through dense forests and is applicable across India.
In this crucial verdict, the order pertaining to the speed limit was generic, and no range was defined, and hence there was no clarity on the speed limit.
Such a policy gap attracts a slew of unwanted incidents, the cost of which is borne solely by ‘protected’ species. Several new railway projects will increase the traffic within various protected areas in the coming days, but there are no speed limit mandates in order.
Several times, forest officials report that the railways have not adhered to the prescribed speed limit. The railway officials are fully aware of the flaw in policy and are confident that no one will penalise them despite casualties on the track. It would perhaps be prudent at this stage to define the speed limit for the country’s entire protected area and draft strict penalty provisions for the railways.
C.Need for a monitoring committee on the efficacy of mitigation structures
Any development project necessitates an environment impact assessment (EIA), and in such a study, various mitigation measures such as culverts, overpasses, bridges, and tunnels are proposed to facilitate safe passage to animals from one side to the other so that the rail tracks do not pose a risk or a barrier. Such mitigations fulfil the concept of sustainability and ensure animal permeability.
The concern is that mitigation measures proposed by EIA agencies should not be limited to paper only, required for clearance from the relevant authorities. Project personnel should abide by the suggestions made by the EIA organisations. Several accredited agencies do the EIA and propose well-designed mitigation structures by keeping in mind the habitat use of animals, water flow regime, movement pattern and several other ecological parameters.
For such environmental projects, a monitoring committee should be established to oversee the technical recommendations made by authorised agencies for the mitigation structure to be designed correctly and in the best interest of the endemic species. This committee will also monitor the effectiveness of the constructed design in terms of animal use.
Way Forward
In the past two decades, several projects were cleared with mitigation structures. However, it is time to assess the efficacy of those mitigation structures, and a detailed study has to be conducted. The results of this study can strengthen our policies relating to EIAs and implementation and mitigation strategies in linear infrastructure developments.
A guideline prepared by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) titled “Eco-friendly measures to mitigate impacts of linear infrastructure on wildlife” in 2016 (WII, 2016) is being largely suggested by various apex agencies like the National Board of Wildlife (NBWL) during clearance of project for implementing mitigation measures.
In the last five years, there has been a tremendous increase in the linear infrastructures in and around protected forest areas. Also, there have been scientific advancements and knowledge generated in the past few years pertaining to mitigation strategies. It is high time to review and update the existing WII guidelines and make them more scientifically robust by improvising them with recent knowledge and experience.
There is growing recognition that people and wildlife can coexist in human-dominated landscapes with appropriate tools and management, public policies, and societal support.
An ancient Sanskrit verse expresses “Ati Sarvatra Varjayet “, meaning anything in excess is harmful. This verse shares the key to sustainable consumption. Human conflict with wildlife has contributed to the decline and extinction of many species, terrestrial carnivores and herbivores.
The loss of a species as a result of train collision had a cascading effect on the ecosystem. This skewed growth-oriented approach will continue to put more pressure on forest lands. Nature has already defined the line between animals and humans, and it is our responsibility to keep it as straightforward as possible. It is time to make sustainable consumption and instil one’s ethical and social responsibility for nature conservation.
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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.
Consider this hypothetical situation: Rajalakshmi, from a remote Karnataka village spots a business opportunity.
She knows that flowers, discarded in the thousands by temples can be handcrafted into incense sticks.
She wants to find a market for the product and hopefully, employ some people to help her. Soon enough though, she discovers that starting a business is a herculean task for a person like her.
There is a laborious process of rules and regulations to go through, bribes to pay on the way and no actual means to transport her product to its market.
After making her first batch of agarbathis and taking it to Bengaluru by bus, she decides the venture is not easy and gives up.
On the flipside of this is a young entrepreneur in Bengaluru. Let’s call him Deepak. He wants to start an internet-based business selling sustainably made agarbathis.
He has no trouble getting investors and to mobilise supply chains. His paperwork is over in a matter of days and his business is set up quickly and ready to grow.
Never mind that the business is built on aggregation of small sellers who will not see half the profit .
Is this scenario really all that hypothetical or emblematic of how we think about entrepreneurship in India?
Between our national obsession with unicorns on one side and glorifying the person running a pakora stall for survival as an example of viable entrepreneurship on the other, is the middle ground in entrepreneurship—a space that should have seen millions of thriving small and medium businesses, but remains so sparsely occupied that you could almost miss it.
If we are to achieve meaningful economic growth in our country, we need to incorporate, in our national conversation on entrepreneurship, ways of addressing the missing middle.
Spread out across India’s small towns and cities, this is a class of entrepreneurs that have been hit by a triple wave over the last five years, buffeted first by the inadvertent fallout of demonetization, being unprepared for GST, and then by the endless pain of the covid-19 pandemic.
As we finally appear to be reaching some level of normality, now is the opportune time to identify the kind of industries that make up this layer, the opportunities they should be afforded, and the best ways to scale up their functioning in the shortest time frame.
But, why pay so much attention to these industries when we should be celebrating, as we do, our booming startup space?
It is indeed true that India has the third largest number of unicorns in the world now, adding 42 in 2021 alone. Braving all the disruptions of the pandemic, it was a year in which Indian startups raised $24.1 billion in equity investments, according to a NASSCOM-Zinnov report last year.
However, this is a story of lopsided growth.
The cities of Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR, and Mumbai together claim three-fourths of these startup deals while emerging hubs like Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, and Jaipur account for the rest.
This leap in the startup space has created 6.6 lakh direct jobs and a few million indirect jobs. Is that good enough for a country that sends 12 million fresh graduates to its workforce every year?
It doesn’t even make a dent on arguably our biggest unemployment in recent history—in April 2020 when the country shutdown to battle covid-19.
Technology-intensive start-ups are constrained in their ability to create jobs—and hybrid work models and artificial intelligence (AI) have further accelerated unemployment.
What we need to focus on, therefore, is the labour-intensive micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME). Here, we begin to get to a definitional notion of what we called the mundane middle and the problems it currently faces.
India has an estimated 63 million enterprises. But, out of 100 companies, 95 are micro enterprises—employing less than five people, four are small to medium and barely one is large.
The questions to ask are: why are Indian MSMEs failing to grow from micro to small and medium and then be spurred on to make the leap into large companies?
At the Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME), we have advocated for a National Mission for Mass Entrepreneurship, the need for which is more pronounced now than ever before.
Whenever India has worked to achieve a significant economic milestone in a limited span of time, it has worked best in mission mode. Think of the Green Revolution or Operation Flood.
From across various states, there are enough examples of approaches that work to catalyse mass entrepreneurship.
The introduction of entrepreneurship mindset curriculum (EMC) in schools through alliance mode of working by a number of agencies has shown significant improvement in academic and life outcomes.
Through creative teaching methods, students are encouraged to inculcate 21st century skills like creativity, problem solving, critical thinking and leadership which are not only foundational for entrepreneurship but essential to thrive in our complex world.
Udhyam Learning Foundation has been involved with the Government of Delhi since 2018 to help young people across over 1,000 schools to develop an entrepreneurial mindset.
One pilot programme introduced the concept of ‘seed money’ and saw 41 students turn their ideas into profit-making ventures. Other programmes teach qualities like grit and resourcefulness.
If you think these are isolated examples, consider some larger data trends.
The Observer Research Foundation and The World Economic Forum released the Young India and Work: A Survey of Youth Aspirations in 2018.
When asked which type of work arrangement they prefer, 49% of the youth surveyed said they prefer a job in the public sector.
However, 38% selected self-employment as an entrepreneur as their ideal type of job. The spirit of entrepreneurship is latent and waiting to be unleashed.
The same can be said for building networks of successful women entrepreneurs—so crucial when the participation of women in the Indian economy has declined to an abysmal 20%.
The majority of India’s 63 million firms are informal —fewer than 20% are registered for GST.
Research shows that companies that start out as formal enterprises become two-three times more productive than a similar informal business.
So why do firms prefer to be informal? In most cases, it’s because of the sheer cost and difficulty of complying with the different regulations.
We have academia and non-profits working as ecosystem enablers providing insights and evidence-based models for growth. We have large private corporations and philanthropic and funding agencies ready to invest.
It should be in the scope of a National Mass Entrepreneurship Mission to bring all of them together to work in mission mode so that the gap between thought leadership and action can finally be bridged.