In Chandrayaan-3 success, lessons for the media, and for developmental policy

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on August 24, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/08/24/in-chandrayaan-3-success-lessons-for-the-media-and-for-developmental-policy

On August 23, India was literally “over the Moon” when Chandrayaan-3 successfully made a soft landing on a part of the Moon where no one had succeeded thus far. The achievement was not that of one person, but of a team of literally hundreds of scientists affiliated to the Indian Space Research Organisation. 

When the media turned the spotlight on them, all of them highlighted the team effort. Not even one, including the man who heads ISRO, Dr S Somanath, spoke of it as the work of one, or even a small handful of people. Television news tried hard to do that, with one anchor calling Dr Somanath “the man of the match”. The latter firmly denied this and again emphasised the team.

There is something to be learned from the Chandrayaan-3 success story, for us as a country but also for those of us in the media.

First, the success should underline the importance of science, of the scientific process, of rational thinking and of people working together for a larger goal. This piece by writer and journalist Gita Aravamudan, whose husband was a part of the early space projects, brings out the latter aspect well.

A scientific approach is especially significant in these times when we are bombarded with pseudo-science, when scientific facts are erased from our textbooks and when political leaders have no qualms endorsing non-scientific solutions to disease, for instance.

Second, the scientists interviewed by the media after the successful landing spoke of the importance of learning from failure. Chandrayaan-2 had failed to make a soft landing four years ago. Instead of turning on the people who worked on that project, ISRO gave the very same people the responsibility to analyse what went wrong and work towards solutions.  This interview with two scientists by The NewsMinute illustrates the absence of hype in the responses of the scientists.

And third, the importance of high-quality and affordable institutions teaching science and technology. The foundations for this were laid post-Independence when the government invested in such educational institutions. The individual profiles of some of the scientists involved in the Chandrayaan-3 project reveal that most of them were educated in India. 

Unfortunately, these rather obvious lessons will be drowned out in the nationalistic hype surrounding the success as the front-page headline in Indian Express illustrates. 

As for science and what it ought to teach us about development policies, we only have to look at the devastation we are witnessing in Himachal Pradesh.

One of the lessons from the Moon mission that policy makers ought to heed is the importance of learning from past mistakes. It is evident today, that much of the scale of the destruction in Himachal Pradesh could have been minimised had this been done. On the contrary, every principle that evolved from past experience and reinforced in multiple expert reports, has been violated by governments and private builders. The price for this is being paid by ordinary people in these states.

Thanks to social media, those concerned and interested in the tragedy of the Himalayan states have been able to see the distressing visuals of brick-and-mortar structures crumbling within seconds. 

As always, independent media houses have done much better in their coverage of the Himachal disaster than mainstream television. 

The ground reports by Hridayesh Joshi in Newslaundry have been exceptional. They show us not just the extent of the devastation, but also, through interviews with ordinary people and experts, they help us understand the reasons that go beyond heavy rains. 

The Newsclick interviewed seismologist C P Rajendran who speaks about the “flawed developmental model” adopted by states like Himachal Pradesh. 

Print media has also carried some useful articles that explain why we must view the Himachal Pradesh devastation not as a natural disaster but as one made by human intervention.  

For instance, since the 1980s, questions have been raised about building dams in the fragile ecosystem on the Himalayas. Can they sustain large storage dams that allow for generation of power when needed, or would they be better off with “run-of-the-river” dams that are smaller and do not store water? The latter were recommended. But most of the dams built in the last decades have been of the former kind. As this report in The Tribune explains, the release of water from these dams when the water levels rose due to the rainfall – without adequate warning to the habitations along the river – exacerbated the destruction. 

Similarly, there has been a strong push to widen roads to facilitate access for tourists and pilgrims. This is considered essential to boost the economy in  states like Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

But as several reports have shown, even the basic norm that you cannot cut fragile hillsides at angles of 90 degrees was ignored. As a result, we have seen new highways literally crumbling, one side covered by boulders that have rolled down and the other sinking. 

Also, in places like Shimla, if there were town planning norms about the height of structures, or where they can be built, it is evident that they have been ignored. As this story illustrates, brick and concrete structures were even built on riverbeds. This was a disaster just waiting to happen, and it has.

In contrast to Shimla, the hill-station of Mussoorie in Uttarakhand suffered less even though it also encountered heavy rain.  According to this writer, one reason for this was because corrective measures were taken several decades back to reforest areas devastated by limestone mining and restrictions on buildings and roads were put in place.

Ironically, the British who initiated the building of hill stations like Shimla and Mussoorie, had laid down norms that factored in the carrying capacity of these locations, a phrase that is in currency today when it is almost too late. They recommended, for instance, that structures ought not to be constructed on slopes exceeding 30 degrees. 

You could argue that the colonial concept of hill stations restricted access to only the elite, people who could afford second homes away from cities, and that so-called “development” has opened these places to people from other classes who needed cheaper accommodation and public transport. Yet, tragically, it is the classes that can now access these hill stations who have suffered the most. They are the ones who were trapped in buildings that crumbled, on highways that sank, on hillsides that collapsed.

The ongoing disaster in Himachal Pradesh ought to inform us in the media that there is always a back story to what is touted as a “natural disaster”. If we buy into it, and reinforce it in the way we report, we allow those responsible for the problem, usually the government, to get away with it. We also perpetuate the myth that development is essential and that questioning infrastructure projects, such as roads, or dams, is somehow anti-national, or anti-development. 

In the past, many civil society groups and environmentalists have been labelled thus. The Narmada Bachao Andolan that compelled rethinking on large dams like the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada River in the early 1980s was called “anti-development”. The campaign, led by people like Medha Patkar, emphasised the importance of environmental sustainability, and the social costs of large-scale projects that resulted in the displacement of the poorest and most vulnerable communities. This was well before all these concepts were being mouthed by world leaders.

In the case of the Himalayas, again from the 1980s, there have been warnings, and studies to back them, on the direction development plans were taking there. Most of these were not heeded. At most a pretence was made to accept an “expert report” only for it to be relegated to a back shelf.

The consequences of this attitude by all governments, irrespective of their political affiliation, are before our eyes today.  

In the Second Citizens’ Report on the State of the Environment, published in the mid-1980s, the late environmentalist and journalist Anil Agarwal, who established the Centre for Science and Environment, wrote an essay titled “Politics of Environment” which seems almost prophetic today:

“The post-independence political debate in India has centred on two major issues: equity and growth. The environmental concern has added a third dimension: sustainability. India’s biggest challenge today is to identify and implement a development process that will lead to greater equity, growth, and sustainability.”   

“Development can take place at the cost of the environment only uptil a point. Beyond that point it will be like the foolish man who was trying to cut the very branch on which he was sitting”.

From all indications, in the four decades since this was written, India seems to have reached that point. 

Joshimath’s story dates back decades. That’s why media must dig deep

Broken News 

Published in Newslaundry on January 12, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/01/12/joshimaths-story-dates-back-decades-thats-why-media-must-dig-deep

A small town in Uttarakhand has made it to the front pages of newspapers, and as the top story in many television news shows. Joshimath, a town of a little under 17,000 people in Chamoli district, is already well-known to trekkers, those wanting to explore the Himalayas, and Hindu pilgrims. But today, its claim to fame is that it is sinking.

It is also in danger of becoming an adjective – a descriptor of what happens when we ignore concepts of sustainability as we pursue so-called “development”. 

Predictably, when the cracks in Joshimath’s buildings could no longer be ignored, the government moved on a “war footing”, as did the media. We watched videos and saw visuals of distressed residents pointing to huge cracks in their homes, read about a hotel tilting onto another, and listened to experts who said they knew this crisis was imminent.

Yet, the roots of the current crisis – of a town literally sinking – have probably not yet sunk in, either to the lay media-consuming public with an increasingly diminishing attention span, or to the people who pushed through plans to build power plants and blast the fragile mountains for roads, despite adequate warnings from experts. 

There is a message here for the media – a message it continues to ignore. Even if you report on a disaster, integrate the perspectives that explain the reasons for it. It’s not difficult to do this. And if it’s done, chances are that more people will understand why many of the projects being pursued in the ecologically fragile environment of the Himalayas spell disaster.

Of course, as always, there are exceptions. Newspapers and digital platforms have carried excellent explainers that an interested reader can plough through (see here and here). But useful as this is, it is not enough. The facts tracing this disaster to earlier policies are clear. They need to be repeated, they need to be integrated in the reporting. 

Few can explain more simply than Dehradun-based veteran environmentalist Ravi Chopra, who headed the high-powered committee looking at the environmental impact of the Char Dham project in Uttarakhand. He resigned last February because their recommendations were ignored. Read his interview in Down to Earth and his op-ed in Hindustan Times that say all that needs to be said. 

Another article in Down to Earth also reminds us that what’s happening in Joshimath today could happen in a number of other towns in Uttarakhand, including the popular tourist resort of Nainital, before too long. The reasons are the same: unsustainable development that pays no heed to the carrying capacity of the natural environment.

The new year has begun with another environment-related story on the front pages, one that gives all of us a sinking feeling. In 2021, of the 50 most polluted cities in the world, 35 were in India. The situation today is likely to be no different, perhaps even worse. Not just Delhi, but in dozens of other small and big cities in this country, residents are choking from poisonous air. You don’t need a viral infection to get lung congestion these days. You only need to breathe the air.

According to the World Health Organisation, 90 percent of the world’s population breathes air that is worse than acceptable limits. But within that, it is people in low- and middle-income countries like India that suffer the most. In any case, India has diluted WHO standards for air quality although revising them is being discussed. At present, what is considered “good” air quality here in India is actually “moderate” or even “poor” air quality according to WHO standards.

Like the Joshimath story, the reports we read do not adequately explain the current air pollution crisis in India. Even as the air quality index climbs higher in city after city, there are some reports explaining the possible reasons: vehicular pollution, construction dust, industrial pollution, etc. 

The factors contributing to air pollution, such as vehicular pollution, have been known for decades. Most readers today would not be aware that in the 1990s, one man fought determinedly for a change in the fuel used in public transport in Delhi. That was Anil Agarwal, who set up the Centre for Science and Environment. The air pollution levels in Delhi at that time were nowhere as bad as they are today. Yet, Agarwal, who suffered from chronic asthma and later succumbed to cancer, campaigned through CSE for a change in fuel used in public transport in Delhi from petrol and diesel to CNG. Several other cities implemented this in later years. The 2010 CSE report, Slow Murder: The deadly story of vehicular pollution in India, is worth revisiting even today.

But despite campaigns by CSE and other environmental groups about the polluted air in our cities, there is little to no outrage about the many projects being implemented that do nothing to address the problem. Instead, more roads are being built to accommodate a greater volume of vehicular traffic using fossil fuels, there is little to no compulsion on the building industry to implement dust alleviating strategies, and the system to keep a check on levels of pollutants emitted by industries and thermal power stations in the vicinity of cities remains impaired despite decades of debate about it.  

Every year during the winter months, we see photographs showing us what we can see when we look out of our windows. Yet those with the power to take hard decisions – such as suspending all construction activity during the worst days, or restricting vehicular movement – choose to ignore what stares them in the face and invades their nostrils as much as those of ordinary citizens. Could this be because there is no public outrage?

Unlike in Joshimath, where the buildings with cracks face demolition, and the anxious and angry owners of these structures are out on the streets protesting, India’s urban residents seem to have accepted a slow death from poisonous air with apparent equanimity. 

One reason for such a passive response can be attributed to the class factor. The people most affected by the poisonous air quality are the homeless and those who are compelled to do outdoor physical labour – basically the poorest in our cities whose voices are rarely heard. The better-off have windows they can close, with air-conditioning in their cars and homes that allows them to insulate themselves. Possibly, this is one reason why the problem of air pollution has rarely moved the powerful, nor led to drastic changes in the way we view urban development. For instance, as Shoaib Daniyal points out in this article, bus commuters who are the majority in any city rarely get their voices heard over private car owners. 

In this gloomy scenario, here’s a suggestion for the media. What if in all the 35 cities on the top of that list of polluted Indian cities, local newspapers, radio stations and TV channels ran a daily count of not just the poor air quality, but of the number of people hospitalised and dying from respiratory infections? In the last three years of the pandemic, many media outlets did this, tabulating daily the number of people afflicted, hospitalised, or dead due to Covid. Surely, such a proactive step by the media would play a significant part in building up public opinion that could then put pressure on decision-makers to act. 

That’s another item for my wish list for 2023.