UP CM thunders, BJP surrenders

By B L Kak

Having accepted all conditions of Ms Mayawati before her coronation as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh (UP), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is left with no alternative but to suffer her. And events bear testimony to the fact that the BJP has buckled under pressure of Ms Mayawati and swallowed its bravado and high sounding moral precepts for the formation of the Government in UP.

If the TINA (there is no alternative) factors had set the country in favour of Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, then there was a new symbol, recently, which was coined for UP. It read as MITA (Mayawati is the alternative). A newspaper used the phrase and correctly so, as all hurdles towards Government formation in the largest and most populous State were cleared one by one.

Remember 1996, when it took almost six months before the BJP and the NSDP worked out an arrangement to form a coalition Government. It took much less time this time. Why has the BJP tied itself to the apron-strings of Ms Mayawati, leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)? In sharing power with the BSP, the BJP is confident that it would maintain its hold on the electorate and the State administration. This calculation may not eventually prove plausible, if one were to take into view the choice of operations employed by Ms Mayawati soon after taking over the reins of Government.

Ms Mayawati took over as the Chief Minister for the third time and speculation among the general masses and predictions from the opposition parties of an early end to her 'honeymoon' with the BJP. Going by her past record, analysts are not giving her much of a chance. After all, she had failed to complete her term on either of the first two occasions. At the same time, according to another school of thought, Ms Mayawati may surprise everyone. A woman of the grassroots, she knows that it takes to be a winner. Something she has provided time and again. The latest example of it became too evident to be missed when she announced Ministerial berths for all the dissident Muslim MLAs in her party, who had protested against the BSP's alliance with the BJP.

Ms Mayawati's alleged involvement in a couple of multi-million scams did not prevent her from putting on the mantle of Chief Minister. "Charges may be levelled against anyone, but these require to be proved", UP Governor, Mr Vishnu Kant Shastri was quoted as saying after Samajwadi Party chief, Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav, raised the demand for disallowing Ms Mayawati from becoming Chief Minister of the country's most populous State.

Ms Mayawati has been accused of Malpractices and involvement in several scams during her two brief stints as Chief Minister (four months and six months respectively). The Rs. 100 - crore Ambedkar Park and Rs 40 crore float pump scams are the most infamous ones. In the first one, Ms Mayawati, some BJP leaders and Government officials were accused of pocketing a large part of Rs 1 billion special grant towards the creation of a park in the name of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar.

In the float pumps, scam, Ms Mayawati faces charges of misappropriation of public money during the purchase of float pumps for the fire brigade services in UP. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had probed the matter, but was denied permission by the State Government to prosecute the accused. Ms Mayawati had also been accused of running a 'transfer-posting' industry with huge amounts of money changing hands in return for favourable transfers and postings.

However, the BJP leadership preferred to ignore her past record in these matters while entering into talks for an alliance with the BSP. Now that she has become the Chief Minister, will she complete the full term? Her main problem, evidently, would be pursuit of the dalit agenda, which provoked the BJP to withdrawn support in 1995 and 1997. Her success or failure will be judged by day-to-day administrative functioning. She has already been warned that she cannot stop widespread resentment if she adopted the policy of large-scale transfers of officers and replacing them by dalits.

History bears testimony to the fact that Ms Mayawati, during her first tenure (from June to December 1995), transferred 281 IAS Officers, 600 police personnel and 656 belonging to State service. The situation became worse in her second term (from March to September 1997) when she reposted 378 IAS officers, transferred 580 IPS and uprooted 654 of junior ranks.

BJP was relegated to the third position after Samajwadi Party and the BSP in the recently held Assembly elections in UP. This issue has been of great concern for the BJP and, in fact, was discussed, at length, during the Goa conclave. One view, of course, suggested that the BJP should stay in the opposition. But the predominant views was that the BJP must joint hands with the BSP and make Ms Mayawati the UP Chief Minister.

Interestingly, nobody in the BJP, not even former Chief Minister, Mr Rajnath Singh, now talk about mandate of the people that directed the party to sit in opposition. When Ms Mayawati started thundering against those who criticised her style of functioning, the BJP was found surrendering, absolutely unable to take on the Chief Minister as she allotted key portfolios to her favourites in the BSP. The reasons for the BJP's desperate hurry to appease the BSP leader, even at the cost of its self-respect, was clearly discernible. Why the BJP's desperate hurry? An answer to this question is no far to seek. Having been isolated on the Gujarat issue and crucial debate under rule 184, which had been slated for April 30, the BJP frantically needed support of other parties to ensure that it did not face defeat in the voting in the Lok Sabha. And when the BJP virtually surrendered to Ms Mayawati, she, in return, committed to ensure support of the BSP's 13 MPs in the wake of the voting.

True, there was some resentment from a section of the BJP in Lucknow against Ms Mayawati's "indifference" to the part at the time of distributing portfolio's to the BJP Ministers. But the angry leaders and legislators of the BJP were prevented from organising expression against the Chief Minister by the Prime Minister himself. Mr Vajpayee had to turn down the idea favouring his intervention. And when a group of the party leaders interacted with him in Delhi on May 6, Mr Vajpayee refused to intervene. He, in fact, for obvious political and strategic reasons, advocated a 'wait-and-watch' policy.

Whatever the Prime Minister's attitude towards the angry BJP members, Mr Vajpayee cannot prevent people from frequently asking the question these days: How long will the BSP-BJP coalition last in Lucknow? The prediction is as easy to make as the forecast in February was that the elections would throw up a hung Assembly. In other words, the miracle of the coalition may not last for a full term.

An empty chimera called global warming

By Jyotshna Pandit

Every now and then, a doomsday prophecy catches international attention, resulting in a deluge of largely illusive literature. In the 1960s, it was the "Limits to growth" thesis sponsored by the Club of Rome, which foretold the world's end. Thanks to a few staunch optimists such as Junlian Symons of Maryland University, the fallacies of the arguments were exposed and despite a repeat attempt by the MIT modellers, the whole concept fizzled out.

Economists, politicians, scientists, laymen and the universal public tend to overlook the basic fact that all estimates of horrendous damage to various economies - developed and developing - are all tentative and totally unproven, if not outright fiction.

The Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), signed by 152 nations at the 1992 UN conference on Environment and Development, was the initial international response to global warming. The objective of the convention is to achieve "stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system", and this is to be achieved within a timeframe that allows ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change. The objective is not worthy as it does not specify a particular numerical target for either concentrations or temperature change, implicitly acknowledges that some climate change will take place, and includes all greenhouse gases, not just carbon dioxide.

The signing of the Kyoto Protocol in December 1997 was the culmination of a decade of protracted and oft-heated political negotiation, and over four decades of research on the subject of global climate change.

The principal success of the Kyoto Protocol was in establishing quantifiable commitments by the industrialised nations to limit and reduce their greenhouses gas (GHG) emissions. The aggregate aim of these commitments is to reduce emissions of a basket of six GHGs from the Annexe-I countries to at least 5 per cent below the base year level during the commitment period from 2008 to 2012.

The US was to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by 7 per cent from 1990 levels by 2008-12, with slightly larger reductions for the EU and slightly less from Japan. This implies a reduction for the US of about 30 per cent below projected baseline emissions by 2010.

Russia and other former communist countries, which have already dramatically reduced emissions through recession and restructuring, have 1990 levels as targets. Achieving targets in Europe will be assisted by the carbon-emissions reductions already accomplished through conversion of coal and natural gas in the UK utility sector and the closing of energy-inefficient industry in the former East Germany.

The EU is to be treated as a "bubble", with an overall reduction of 8 per cent from 1990 levels. There are no obligations for developing countries to limit emissions, making ratification by the US Congress problematic. In July 1997, the US Congress unanimously passed a resolution to the effect that it would not ratify any agreement unless developing countries also took on commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Six GHGs are covered and allowance is made for carbon sinks (credits or debits for aforesaid and deforestation since 1990). Ratification requires at least 55 parties, including Annexe-I countries' emissions in 1990.

India and China have not signed the protocol on the grounds that their emission levels are much lower than the developed countries and they need to "catch up" on development. Hence, the extra burden should be borne by rich countries. Japan and the EU countries have signed the protocol.

Estimates of damage due to global warming vary widely.

Nordhaus estimated it to be 1 per cent of GNP, focussing on agriculture and sea-level rise. US estimates by different agencies range from 1 per cent of GDP to 1.1 per cent, depending on assumptions regarding the volume of trading. In India, the NCAER estimated the damage, if any, to be less than 0.5 per cent of GDP. OECD estimates also vary widely.

All the environmental degradation is largely manmade, the product of venal greed; this includes overfishing, destruction of forests which alters the rainfall, decimation of mangroves and aquifers, silting and soil erosion, air, water and land pollution and the like. These are the results of slack and often corrupt environmental management.

The international character of the problem has far reaching implications, ranging from the need to negotiate, not impose, control regimes, to the selection of efficient regulatory instruments. Reaching an international agreement on objectives and implementing a global warming policy would be considerably easier if all countries were similar. They are not.

There are major relevant differences among countries with respect to (1) past, present and prospective emissions; (2) vulnerability to global warming; (3) the costs of emissions control; (4) income levels and, hence, discount rates, valuation of damage, and willingness and ability to pay for controls; and (5) institutional capacity to formulae, implement, and enforce controls.

Countries are also linked together through international trade and capital flows. Serious efforts to control global warming will have significant effects on the exchange rates, and the competitive position of individual industries and countries. Moreover, trade and investment can be the vehicles through which emissions controlled by one set of countries. Moreover, trade and investment can be the vehicles through which emissions controlled by one set of countries, are shunted or leaked to uncontrolled countries, reducing the effectiveness of the control regime.

One cannot directly compare emissions rates of various gases to climate change for two reasons. First, the atmospheric lifetime of gases varies from about 12 years for methane to 50-200 years for CO2. Second, greenhouse gases do not have the same radiative effects per unit mass emitted.

The Kyoto targets do not reflect a careful cost-benefit analysis of emission reductions or their timing. Developing countries would be well-advised to focus attention on pressing issues such as the WTO, rather than expend scarce time on vague non-issues. INAV