DB Gupta, Sanat Kaul
Posted online: 2011-01-19
Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh has recently stated: “They (forests) not only face the existential threat from encroachment… but they also face what is becoming perhaps the single biggest threat to Indian forests, which I call the development threat”. He has also stated that 40% of the country’s total 70 million hectares of forests is open degraded forests. None of our government economists or planners has ever made a serious attempt to look into the factors responsible for such a high percentage of degraded forests. Can this possibly be explained by their undue obsession with macro planning and modelling, and little regard for geographical and spatial planning?
None of India’s five-year plans ever gave serious consideration to the need for spatial planning, aside from some lip service. Clearly the rural-urban divide is unsustainable with the kind of development model we have adopted. This is so because 70% of our 1.2 billion populations cannot eke out a living out of a rural economy which largely consists of small, uneconomic and unviable agricultural holdings. This concern is reinforced when we contrast the decline of the share of agriculture in the country’s GDP from nearly two-thirds at independence to a low of around 15% in 2010 with the decline in rural population, which is significantly lower during the corresponding period, going down from about 80-85% in 1947 to only 70% in 2010. The burgeoning rural population is finding it difficult to eke a living out of the limited fertile land, which is becoming increasingly expensive and out of reach. Consequently, this rural population has little option but to drift towards urban areas to look for jobs and eventually settle down often in unauthorised slums, mostly involving encroached but affordable land and housing prices. All those who are unable to emulate such encroachers resort to encroaching land in rural areas. In such a situation, forest land becomes an easy prey. Note that the phenomenon of landlessness and marginal holdings is becoming more and more pronounced.
What went wrong? While our investment in agriculture has generally remained relatively small, it is also true that we did not plan for a smooth transfer of rural populations to urban areas by creating suitable urban agglomerates with transit accommodation for a smooth movement from rural to urban areas. While part of the problem of relocation may largely be related to the democratic path that the country has justifiably adopted, it should also be admitted that smoother relocation could have been achieved through a concerted spatial plan, with focus on employment combined with the availability of a minimal, affordable transit accommodation. There is an urgent need for government to locate lands which are neither fit nor required for agriculture and forests, and which are at the same time not difficult to acquire. India has nearly 64 million hectares of degraded, saline, arid and desert lands. While land is a state subject, migration of population is not. The government of India should help set up industrial parks and EPZs in such lands in consultation with the concerned state governments. This will also involve minimum housing and welfare provision. In this case, we could seek lessons from China which created such zones and allowed a massive transfer of populations from rural to urban areas, and that too in a short span of time, to become the factory of the world. Admittedly such a course is not easy to emulate for a country like India, but what can however be done is to try the China model on a pilot basis.
Modern economies have a large component of employment in industry and service sectors, and modern agriculture can sustain perhaps no more than 10-12% of the population. This percentage is indeed much lower in countries like the US, France, the UK, Germany or Japan. For India to emerge as a modern economy and also to retain its forest cover, there is a dire and emergent need to initiate vigorous measures in spatial planning, focussed on massive but controlled urbanisation. The instruments for such an exercise would have to be used with care, so that the sensibilities of civil society are not hurt. This could perhaps be achieved through incentives and clearly not through force and coercion. This may also contribute to the revival of our forests, which are so essential for the country’s ecological health.
The SEZ policy adopted by the government does not have any special characteristics and, therefore, does not meet the criteria of spatial planning. NREGA is yet another scheme that has hardly any significant economic rationale except for providing a dole to the rural poor, that too against ill-conceived rural developmental schemes which may not have any lasting impact on society. In fact, there is hardly any evidence to demonstrate that NREGA has succeeded in creating assets commensurate with the expenditure on the programme. Indeed, the annual expenditure on NREGA at about Rs 60,000 crore could easily have built up urban infrastructure to sustain the living of many millions of migrant rural people.
Sanat Kaul is a commentator and DB Gupta is with the National Council of Applied Economic Research
Posted online: 2011-01-19
Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh has recently stated: “They (forests) not only face the existential threat from encroachment… but they also face what is becoming perhaps the single biggest threat to Indian forests, which I call the development threat”. He has also stated that 40% of the country’s total 70 million hectares of forests is open degraded forests. None of our government economists or planners has ever made a serious attempt to look into the factors responsible for such a high percentage of degraded forests. Can this possibly be explained by their undue obsession with macro planning and modelling, and little regard for geographical and spatial planning?
None of India’s five-year plans ever gave serious consideration to the need for spatial planning, aside from some lip service. Clearly the rural-urban divide is unsustainable with the kind of development model we have adopted. This is so because 70% of our 1.2 billion populations cannot eke out a living out of a rural economy which largely consists of small, uneconomic and unviable agricultural holdings. This concern is reinforced when we contrast the decline of the share of agriculture in the country’s GDP from nearly two-thirds at independence to a low of around 15% in 2010 with the decline in rural population, which is significantly lower during the corresponding period, going down from about 80-85% in 1947 to only 70% in 2010. The burgeoning rural population is finding it difficult to eke a living out of the limited fertile land, which is becoming increasingly expensive and out of reach. Consequently, this rural population has little option but to drift towards urban areas to look for jobs and eventually settle down often in unauthorised slums, mostly involving encroached but affordable land and housing prices. All those who are unable to emulate such encroachers resort to encroaching land in rural areas. In such a situation, forest land becomes an easy prey. Note that the phenomenon of landlessness and marginal holdings is becoming more and more pronounced.
What went wrong? While our investment in agriculture has generally remained relatively small, it is also true that we did not plan for a smooth transfer of rural populations to urban areas by creating suitable urban agglomerates with transit accommodation for a smooth movement from rural to urban areas. While part of the problem of relocation may largely be related to the democratic path that the country has justifiably adopted, it should also be admitted that smoother relocation could have been achieved through a concerted spatial plan, with focus on employment combined with the availability of a minimal, affordable transit accommodation. There is an urgent need for government to locate lands which are neither fit nor required for agriculture and forests, and which are at the same time not difficult to acquire. India has nearly 64 million hectares of degraded, saline, arid and desert lands. While land is a state subject, migration of population is not. The government of India should help set up industrial parks and EPZs in such lands in consultation with the concerned state governments. This will also involve minimum housing and welfare provision. In this case, we could seek lessons from China which created such zones and allowed a massive transfer of populations from rural to urban areas, and that too in a short span of time, to become the factory of the world. Admittedly such a course is not easy to emulate for a country like India, but what can however be done is to try the China model on a pilot basis.
Modern economies have a large component of employment in industry and service sectors, and modern agriculture can sustain perhaps no more than 10-12% of the population. This percentage is indeed much lower in countries like the US, France, the UK, Germany or Japan. For India to emerge as a modern economy and also to retain its forest cover, there is a dire and emergent need to initiate vigorous measures in spatial planning, focussed on massive but controlled urbanisation. The instruments for such an exercise would have to be used with care, so that the sensibilities of civil society are not hurt. This could perhaps be achieved through incentives and clearly not through force and coercion. This may also contribute to the revival of our forests, which are so essential for the country’s ecological health.
The SEZ policy adopted by the government does not have any special characteristics and, therefore, does not meet the criteria of spatial planning. NREGA is yet another scheme that has hardly any significant economic rationale except for providing a dole to the rural poor, that too against ill-conceived rural developmental schemes which may not have any lasting impact on society. In fact, there is hardly any evidence to demonstrate that NREGA has succeeded in creating assets commensurate with the expenditure on the programme. Indeed, the annual expenditure on NREGA at about Rs 60,000 crore could easily have built up urban infrastructure to sustain the living of many millions of migrant rural people.
Sanat Kaul is a commentator and DB Gupta is with the National Council of Applied Economic Research
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