THE state highway between Viramgam and Surendranagar towns in Gujarat presents a stark contrast. On one side is a carpet of green fields for miles, and on the other, decaying Jowar and cotton crops, at places submerged in water. The 60 km highway itself remained under water for three days in mid-September.

The contrast makes clear the nature of floods in Gujarat. There are no rivers near inundated areas. After Surat floods in 2006, this is the second time that a major flood has happened in the state due to blocking of drainage paths. Most affected areas are in the peninsular Saurashtra region. In two days, September 17-18, it rained as much in Surendranagar district as it rains in a year there. “It rained more than 40 inches in 30 hours, leading to flooding. There was no time for water to recede,” said J D Bhad, collector of Surendranagar.

The damage was heavy. Over a hundred thousand hectares of agricultural land was damaged by water-logging. About two thousand houses have collapsed completely and 13,000 others are partially damaged. Yudhveer Jadhav, an elder member of Adalsar village in Surendranagar, estimates that in his Lakhtar taluka, cotton crops worth Rs 40 crore have been damaged.

Jadhav’s family itself had sown cotton in 4 hectares (ha). “We invested whatever we could in the crop and were waiting for it to grow,” he said. But then came floods. About 70 per cent of the crops and 20 per cent land in Adalsar are ruined. Jadhav has calmly accepted his fate. “It is a natural disaster, one cannot call it the fault of the government,” he said. But he does agree that had it not been for the raised highways and canals of the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Project, the damage could have been lesser.

In nearby Limbadi taluka, Kantibhai Bhatana also lost half his crops.

“Two acres (a little less than a hectare) of my land near the road is completely damaged and it will take years before anything grows on it. The sand and rocks that came with water will have to be removed manually and new soil will have to be spread,”

he said. The contrast was visible here as well. The crop in his field across the road, connecting Surendranagar town and Limbadi, was standing tall and healthy. “The rainfall did not affect that side much because the water receded quickly. On this side the water was blocked by the road,” he said.

Survey for compensation would take “some time”, said Bhad.

On the edge of Saurashtra in Little Rann of Kutch, salt workers called Agariyas were stuck in more than seven feet of water. Their newly installed machinery for salt production was submerged.

The Rann is a low-lying area that remains submerged for four months till August. In September the Agariyas migrate to the Little Rann of Kutch to produce salt. “The problem aggravated because there are no raised areas in the Rann where they could take refuge,” said Bharat Patel, who works with Agariya Hitrakshak Manch, an advocacy group for the rights of salt workers. Bodies of five fishermen were found in Little Rann of Kutch, he added. The nearby 42 sq km Nal Sarovar bird sanctuary was also under water.

Obstructive network

The damage due to the Narmada canal network in Saurashtra and to the network itself was huge. A yet-to-be-commissioned pump house in Lakhtar, the second largest in Asia, gave way under high water pressure. The canal breached at three places, aggravating the flood.

The Saurashtra branch canal of the Narmada project—that branches off from the main canal at Kadi in Mehsana district and runs across the Saurashtra region—is designed to hold a flow of about 400 cubic metres per second (cumecs), but the downpour led to a flow of over 600 cumecs. This was one of the reasons for breaches.

Asia’s second largest pump station in Lakhtar, now broken

There were also reports of villagers breaching the high embankment of the canal as water was being held in their village. “This is because at places the ground level is lower than the base of the canal,” said an official of the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Limited (ssnl) that manages the entire canal network, on the condition of anonymity.

The topography of the area is like a saucer. The first half of the Saurashtra branch canal is sloping, while the second half is flat, where water has to be pumped to keep it flowing.

“The rainfall happened in 110 sq km of the canal’s tail-end area. As the water was draining towards the slope, its movement was obstructed by the pump house, which can pump water only in one direction (away from the slope), thus it was broken,”

said an ssnl official. According to ssnl officers, more than Rs 50 crore will be required to reconstruct the pump and repair the breaches.

Rain pattern is not the same

Did the designers of the canal err in assessing its required holding capacity? Usually, engineers consider rainfall data of 50 years while deciding the design capacity, but a change in the rainfall pattern in the past few years has spoiled the calculations.

Saurashtra is a drought-prone area but rainfall pattern there is changing. The rainfall in 24 hours on September 19 was 1,123 mm in Lakhtar, almost double the average of total rainfall in a year there, 550 mm, according to the State Disaster Management Authority. The average is based on last 11 years’ data. In 2007, Lakhtar received 836 mm of rainfall. In Limbadi, rainfall in September was 622 mm in 24 hours as against an annual average of 699 mm. “I have seen floods only four-five times. The last big flood was about 35 years ago. But this year’s is the worst,” said octogenarian Megabha Mohan Samatiya of Moti Katechi village in Limbadi. In 2005, Limbadi received 1,245 mm rainfall.

But in recent years people in Surendranagar have suffered small floods almost every monsoon. “The canal breaches every year during monsoon in Halwad and Dhrangadra talukas. We have reported this to the mamlatdar, a block-level officer, several times but there is no action,” said Patel of Agariya Hitrakshak Manch.

Wherever the ground level is below the canal bed level, drainage siphons are created in the canal every one-and-a-half kilometers. But even siphons got submerged. They easily get clogged by silt and logs. “Drainage paths have got obstructed due to the canals which divide the topography into two. Whatever we do, we cannot fully compensate the requirements of nature. People will breach the dam when they see danger to their homes and crops,” admitted the ssnl official.

A study by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences released in August this year shows that about 52 per cent of the command area of the Narmada canal faces very high probability of water-logging and salination, resulting in crop loss. This is even as the supply for irrigation and drinking water has not been fulfilled according to its potential.

Himanshu Upadhyaya of the Delhi-based NGO Environics Trust said rainfall was a “frivolous” excuse for what happened in Saurashtra.

“This cannot be called flooding because none of these areas is near a river basin. The phenomenon of local flooding due to water-logging was evident in 2004. Infrastructure in Gujarat overlooks the gradient of land, be it canals or the highways,”

he said. The Ahmedabad-Vadodara Expressway had caused similar damage during the 2006 flood.
Farmers like Jadhav, however, continue to believe that floods are God’s will, giving the government a clean chit.

The trade talks at the World Trade Organization headquarters in Geneva collapsed in the last week of July. The Union minister for Commerce, Kamal Nath, said India would not accede to the demands of developed countries at the cost of Indian farmers. Nath seems to have become a hero in many quarters in the country and in other developing countries—and a villain amongst developed countries for allegedly scuttling free trade negotiations. But in reality, he has virtually complied with all conditions of the wto agriculture text, including almost zero farm subsidy reduction by developed countries. And the talks actually collapsed because the us did not want to make any commitment to cut massive subsidies to cotton growers.

India had three main demands before the commencement of the meet. It wanted reduction in subsidies to farmers in developed countries and increase in the number of special products—items on which developing countries have flexibility to raise import tariff because these items are important for food, livelihood security and rural development. India also wanted a simplified Special Safeguard Mechanism (ssm) that would allow developing countries to raise tariffs to protect farmers from surging imports. But at Geneva, India did not raise the first two issues at all. The issue of ssm was stonewalled by the us.

The real spoilsport

On the eighth day of the ministerial, the European Union brokered a proposal on ssms. The proposal said that developing countries could hike import duties/ tariffs to any level, if they could prove, in 60 days, that glut in imports or fall in prices of imported goods is inimical to domestic livelihoods, food security and rural development. The draft circulated before the meet talked of limits on hikes in import duties.

Six of the G-7 countries including China and India agreed to the proposal but the us blocked it. US trade representative Susan Schwab said ssms in the present form “were very protective for developing countries and could not be accepted”.

“This was an excuse because if all countries had agreed to the us proposal, the next issue on the agenda would have been cotton subsidies which the us wanted to evade”

said Bhaskar Goswami of the Delhi-based think tank Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security.

“In 2007, the us doles out three billion dollars as cotton subsidy. This came down to one billion in 2008 because 38 per cent of land under cotton had been diverted to corn and other bio-fuel crops. At Geneva, the us would have been asked to cut down the subsidy by 70 per cent and that would have created trouble in an election year,” Goswami explained.

The us has already lost a wto dispute on cotton subsidies. “In 2003, it was criticized for protecting its 20,000 cotton growers impoverishing millions of cotton growers in the four African countries—Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad. The impact has been also borne by Indian cotton farmers who were priced out and committed suicide under pressure of heavy loans,” said Devinder Sharma who is also affiliated with the same think tank.

Withdraw

Meanwhile, farm movements in India are demanding complete exclusion of agriculture from WTO talks.

“Developed countries want to protect their agriculture though heavy subsidies and high tariff barriers and at the same time want access for their products in the developing countries. There can be no agreement unless the developed world drastically changes its attitude. So we believe that wto has become ineffective and needs to be wind up,”

said Krishan Bir Chaudhary, the president of the nationwide farmers’ organization Bharat Krishak Samaj.

“Free market will only lead to more suicides. We have to be completely self-reliant in agriculture and food and not accede to the will of multi-national companies,” said Chukki Nanjunda swamy of another farmers’ organization Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha, a farm organization.

The fact that wto director general Pascal Lamy has cut short his autumn break and is visiting India on August 10-12 and the us soon after shows how desperate he is to conclude the Doha Development Round which began in 2001. The talks might restart in September.

Farmers’ associations all over India were holding protests demanding exclusion of agriculture as an agenda in the World Trade Organization (wto) talks, even as the organization’s mini-ministerial debated ways to secure “meaningful market access in agriculture, manufacturing and services”. At the time this magazine went to press, farmers’ groups were apprehensive that the Union minister for commerce might sign a deal at this meet in Geneva allowing the entry of cheap agricultural products from the developed world. “That would be the last nail in the coffin of small farming in India,” said Sheelu Francis of the Tamil Nadu Women’s Collective, an organization representing over a lakh agriculture workers in the state.

The draft for negotiations for the Geneva ministerial—the third draft on the matter—did not accede to most demands of developing countries, the principal one being substantial cuts in subsidies offered to farmers in the us and European Union. These subsidies end up lowering prices of agricultural products in the developed countries below the production cost of farmers in developing countries, giving the former unfair market advantage.

At the time this magazine went to press, the us had made an offer to reduce its permissible subsidies to US $ 15 billion—it had offered 16.4 billion last year. Washington is currently allowed to distribute more than US $48 billion in subsidies under wto’s agreement on agriculture, yes, US $48 billion. But the actual subsidies given to farmers in the us are only about US $7 billion. So the subsidy proposed at Geneva actually gives us the leeway to increase its actual subsidies—not an unlikely possibility given the recent hike in food prices.

There were more strings. The developing countries have to facilitate non-agricultural product market access. Union commerce minister Kamal Nath is not totally averse to the idea. But he also added,

“I hope the proposed subsidy cut is only their opening gambit and not their bottom-line. The subsidy cut really makes no substantial impact.”

“The Prime Minister thinks we should close this issue but unless India’s interests are met, we should not move forward,” Nath said on July 17 before leaving for Geneva. This statement has made farmers’ movements apprehensive that India might end up signing the agreement on agriculture at the mini-ministerial without any major changes.

“The minister seems keen to sign the Doha agreement of the wto when he says that it should be finalized soon. This when the Indian government knows that the us Farms’ Bill, 2008, promises up to us $ 307 billion in subsidies to farmers over the next five years,”

says Yudhveer Singh of the Indian Coordination Committee of Farmers’ Movement, New Delhi.

The Geneva meet is the latest in the Doha Round of wto negotiations—named after the venue of its first meet. The talks, which began in the Qatari capital in 2001, aim to slash subsidies and other barriers to trade “to help reduce poverty and spur economic growth in developing countries”.

According to wto’s categories, there are three kinds of subsidies of which only one is considered to distort production and trade, the Amber Box. With developing countries pressuring the developed countries to cut down on Amber Box subsidies, many subsidies have been move to the Green Box category—deemed as not trade distorting—and the Blue Box—trade distorting but permitted with certain conditions. Over 80 per cent subsidies are in the green and the blue box.

Singh put the reclassification in perspective.

“I asked farmers in Switzerland, if subsidies were cut down there. I was told that the same subsidy that was being given in the name of agriculture yesterday, comes in the name of environment now,”

he said. Bhaskar Goswami of the Delhi-based collective of scientists, policy makers and farmers, Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security offered further explanation.

“Countries are allowed to dole out subsidies to their farmers for food security. This is a Green Box subsidy. The us and the eu give out subsidies for cereals, oilseeds and pulses in the name of food security. But 60 per cent of all this is fed to dairy animals. So a subsidy given in the name of food security becomes trade distorting,”

he said.The latest text talks about disciplining such Green Box subsidies. “But there are no specifics as to how they will be disciplined. So this seems to be hogwash,” Goswami said.

In fact, if the draft for the Geneva ministerial is an indicator, some pro-developing country mechanisms of the wto could be on their way out. Amongst them is Special Safeguards Mechanism (ssms), which allows developing countries to protect their producers from losing out to imported products. Whenever a developing country faces a sudden surge in imports or a depression in domestic price beyond a given threshold, it can invoke ssms and slap additional import duties to protect its market. The new text, however, mentions that the tariff allowed under ssm cannot exceed the pre-Doha round level—they were very low then. Even Nath expressed disappointment at the new ssm rules in Geneva. “Are we expected to stand by, see a surge in imports and do nothing?” he asked in his speech on July 23. Negotiations were on when this magazine went to press.

Researchers who carried out the study say yes. “We found one whole seed and three to four broken seeds,’ says A Pokharia of Birbal Sahni Institute of Paleoethnobotany, Lucknow. The study was carried out in Tokwa, an archaeologically important site in Mirzapur district. The seeds had heavy carbon coating. Based on radiocarbon dates of other Neolithic sites in the region, the author concluded that the seeds belonged to the 3rd-2nd century bc. The study was published in Current Science (Vol 94, No 2).

There are other studies that say that the Portuguese introduced custard apples in the East in the 16th century ad. Pokharia refutes such claims.

“The remains of custard apple have been recorded from other sites like Sanghol in Punjab during the Kushana Period (100–300 ad) and Raja-Nala ka tila in Sonbhadra district, Uttar Pradesh, in the Iron Age (740 bc).’

He cites carvings of custard apple trees on stupas built in 1st-2nd century bc in Bharhut and Mathura, also in Uttar Pradesh. “Such examples prove the fruit plant was brought here much before Columbus discovered Americas,’ he adds.

David L Lentz, a scientist at University of Cincinnati’s Department of Biological Sciences, says the claim cannot be established on the basis of just one seed. “The author found only one seed and it is not in good condition. The site too is not well dated. The custard apple seed was not directly dated. It seems the time period of the seed in question is not secure,’ he said.

Pokharia rejects another theory that the seeds may have been brought by migratory birds, saying,

“The seeds are too large to be brought by birds; only humans could have brought it. Besides, there is no evidence of migratory American birds.’

Anupama K of the French Institute in Pondicherry says more evidence is required to establish links between Asia and America.

In another development, the Central Empowered Committee, which advises the supreme court on forest-related cases, recommended that mines, steel plant and captive port— POSCO‘s proposed projects—should be considered as one and reviewed in entirety for its ecological significance and rehabilitation plans rather than as three different projects. POSCO filed an affidavit in the apex court on January 4, contesting the recommendations and asking for separate clearances for its three “separate’ projects. The case will come up for hearing in the third week of January.

While POSCO officials haven’t agreed to the people’s demands of sharing the company’s profits yet, the Orissa government is planning to set up a high-level committee to discuss them. The villagers also want Rs 25 lakh per acre for their agricultural land and Rs 40 lakh per acre for their homestead land. Other demands include job guarantee, Rs 1,000-monthly allowance to people above 60 and Rs 3,000 per month for families who do not have members eligible for jobs, including the landless who were employed as daily wagers in the betel farms.

The demands were finalized in a meeting organized by Damodar Rout, a local MLA.

“The 52-member committee I formed has made the demand. The state government will take a final decision after the demarcation survey is done. However, it appears unlikely that the company will share its profits with people,’ Rout said.

When officials went for the survey, the villagers did not allow them to do it. They said their demands must be fulfilled first. The survey has been put off for an indefinite period.

Under duress Activists from Orissa Bachao Andolan (oba), a protesting organization, say the demands have been made by “so-called POSCO supporters’ only, mostly in the Nuagaon panchayat.

“The talk of 5 per cent share in profits is a rumour. Some people had earlier demanded Rs 14 lakh per acre for their agricultural land and a two-room house with all amenities. But POSCO officers rejected the demands saying they were exorbitant. The officers told them to come up with a charter of demands, which they have now,’ says Nikunj Bhutia of oba.

People of three panchayats—Dhinkia, Nuagaon and Gandhakujanga—have been protesting against land acquisition for the steel plant and a captive port for POSCO since July 2005. Activists also say people gave in to POSCO because of the threats and punishments they were being subjected to after the villages were cordoned in November last year (see ‘POSCO war’, Down To Earth, December 31, 2007). SP Mishra, public relations officer of the Orissa governor, says the imbroglio will be resolved soon. “A lot of time has been lost and constructions have to begin by April. So, the government may give in to the demands,’ he said.

India is the leading exporter of guar gum, constituting about 80 per cent of the global production. It is being exported to other countries since 1956. Guar gum is derived from guar seeds (cluster beans), a legume crop that grows in semi-arid regions of the subcontinent. It is used as a thickening agent and as an additive in food products.

Traders are now worried because certification is not easy and there is just one testing facility in India, which is very expensive.

“Vimta in Hyderabad charges Rs 30,000-35,000 per sample. Hence, a five-batch container will prove to be very expensive. Rajasthan is planning a testing facility. But till that comes up, big manufacturers will gain because they have their own internal testing laboratories. We need advanced testing facilities at subsidised prices, otherwise small exporters will suffer,”

says Jeewan Gandhi, president of the Rajasthan Guar Gum Association.

However, Girdhari Lal Sarda, president of the All India Guar Gum Manufacturers and Exporters’ Association, says there is no problem. “If we have to export, we will have to show certification; it is not the question of big or small traders,” he said.

The level of dioxin found in the consignment from India Glycol was up to 156 picogrammes per gram of fat, which is well above the six picogrammes allowed by EU.

“This was probably because India Glycol manufactures ethanol in the same compound where they produce gum in their plant in Kashipur in Uttarakhand,’ Gandhi said.

A team from EU is visiting India on October 5-7 to discuss the issue. The team will visit Hyderabad and Jodhpur where most of the food-grade guar is produced.