Dr.Anuradha Saha and Dr.Vijay Bharti
Water scarcity is already an intractable problem in many parts of the world. The United Nations estimates that about one third of the world’s population live in regions that experience water scarcity and the situation continues to deteriorate. Scarcity of water is acute in the world’s rice bowls particularly China and India, with competing demands on fresh water sources triggering conflicts. About 70-80% of global fresh water withdrawals are for the agricultural sector, particularly irrigation and rice accounts for about 85 % of this, mainly due to inundated production. If we compare the relative water requirements of the world’s three main cereal staples viz. maize, rice and wheat, global paddy crop needs approximately five times the irrigation withdrawals needed by the two other major cereals combined. In the most intensively cropped areas under rice, where ground water is often used for irrigation, water tables have been falling at the alarming rate of one meter per year or more.Rice is the only crop that can survive but does not thrive in submerged conditions, which is the cause of limiting the plant’s ability to absorb nutrients. Standing water, in fact suppresses yield by limiting the ability of the roots to respire. This slows down the plants metabolism, ion transport and growth. Moreover, almost all time flooding of rice field is the cause of emission of methane gas. The main benefit of flooding the rice plants is that it checks the proliferation of weeds, thereby saving labour.Rice production in India increased 4.5 times during the last 60 years. The enhanced rice production is deemed to be largely productivity-led, though rice productivity is now improving at a much slower rate.
Low productivity is attributed to many factors, including high dependence on rains, delayed sowing / transplanting, inadequate plant population, low seed replacement rate, frequent floods and droughts, deficiency of micro nutrients and impaired soil health. This signifies reduced rate of response in terms of unit gain in productivity with application of similar inputs over time. Rice crop is mainly transplanted upon 25-35 days old seedling in puddle field and continuous submergence is maintained throughout crop growing season. Thus anaerobic soil conditions are created throughout crop growth. These soils are put to intensive cultivation, raising 2-3 crops in a year continuously. Farmers have relied on chemical fertilizers, pesticides to ensure higher productivity since the Green Revolution. However, of late overall productivity of such lands has been observed to decrease due to several constraints.  Demand for rice is expected to increase by about 38% by 2040. India needs to increase rice production almost double on its current production. India cannot expand its irrigated area to a level that can match production goals in any land extension strategy, as there is paucity of additional land and water.
Therefore, field enhancing measures, including introduction of improved rice varieties and production technologies are expected to help meet the projected increase. If we have to meet food needs without compromising on environmental integrity, it is essential to identify and adopt solutions that are environmentally more sustainable. That is, the methods adopted should reduce water consumption and increase productivity. Currently, several emerging technologies intended to boost paddy yield per hectare require less water. The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) is a well documented methodology belonging to this ilk. SRI emerged in this context as a potential alternative promising yield enhancement with over 30% saving in water, more than 75% saving in seed and improvement in soil quality and soil biota. Transition to SRI helps in addressing the issues of resource degradation in rice production systems, saves precious surface and ground water and at the same time, helps in enhancing households and national level food production. SRI is not a standardised technological method. It is a methodology for comprehensively managing resources-changing the way land, seeds, water, nutrients and human labour are used. SRI is an amalgamation of multiple beneficial practices which improves the production of land, labour, water and capital used in rice cultivation. It improves yields with less water, less seed and less chemical inputs than most conventional methods of rice cultivation.
The returns on inputs are higher, making the method potentially more profitable than most of the traditional methods. However, the actual yield increases depend on how well farmers practice SRI.SRI involves changes in the management system in transplanting early i.e. two leaves stages, single seedlings in a square method followed by practising alternate wetting and drying irrigation and mechanical weeding. This involves new skills both for farmers and labour, whereby timeliness of the operations is extremely crucial. Since SRI does not involve seed based technology, farmers can easily adopt the method. SRI offers unlimited opportunities for exploration and innovation for local adoption in most of the ecosystems. This method improves soil structure and boost productivity through addition of compost and other organic matter. It is a water saving production system through enabling the transition to better management and skills. In case of groundwater scarce area, this also results in saving ground water by about 30% and saves electricity consumed per acre of rice.
If surface irrigation system is followed, savings in irrigation water leads to possibilities of expansion of irrigated area. So, Irrigation Systems renovation needs to provide small quantities of water with precision and reliability than with continuous flooding. SRI can  also improve soil carbon sequestration and other climate change mitigation benefits such as reduction in methane and other GHGs. The challenge now is to scale up the SRI kind of farm based methods to reduce the water input for rice cultivation, while increasing production and reducing the need for use of agrochemicals, which could negatively impact soil and water quality. The larger objective is to scale up SRI as a method that can effectively address global water crisis.  As a way to increase rice productivity, the Government of India has launched several programmes that encourage the use of high yielding varieties, improved nutrient inputs and modern technological methods. These include the Special Rice Production Programme (SRPP) and the Integrated Programme for Rice Development (IPRD). Similarly, SRI needs support from Governments, aid agencies and research organisations. As part of programmes designed to address global water crisis, SRI and similar methods need greater attention. The need of the hour is a shift in policies so that authorities at the local, state and national levels can actively promote the SRI method.

Surojit Mahalanobis
Safe return home of 46 nurses and hundreds of Indian expatriates from strife-ridden Iraq is an example of Quality Track-I diplomacy and governance, in which Indian Government has excelled once again. This is the third time in last three decades that a major possible social crisis has been cleverly averted.
There were two earlier occasions, equally grave, when the Governments of the time were put to litmus test. During both times the Governments had BJP alliance, and now it is leading from the front, as a strong Governing force in the 2014 NDA.
The first Track-I diplomacy took place in 1989 when a kin of the then Union home minister was kidnapped by Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) militants, but later gracefully released, as the rebels came under international pressures, particularly from that of the Gulf countries. That, like this was a mix of Track-I and Track-II diplomacy of silent manoeuvres.
The negotiations were carried out with insightful diplomacy by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who during that term of the National Front Government was in the Opposition as his alliance party, NDA, supported VP Singh’s NF Government from outside along with the Left Front. Astute Vajpayee, a veteran Parliamentarian himself from Pandit Nehru’s time, knew well how far should his diplomacy stretch the risks at crucial times.
The second incident of great track-one diplomacy was in 1999 when the historic Lahore Declaration was ratified by both Indian and Pakistani Parliaments, and a new era of positive liberal statecraft diplomacy was largely acknowledged by the world. Though Lahore Declaration was blemished by the discreet Pakistani Army’s Kargil escapades, it convinced the world to have enough reasons to look at the Pakistani Army with suspicion and distrust. However, by that time Vajpayee’s brilliant historic Track-II diplomacy had already impacted internationally enough to win for India the world’s powerful bodies’ heart. Vajpayee’s Track-II diplomacy also softened the anger of the powerful West and Australia over India’s Pokhran-II showcase.
Both these incidents of Track-I diplomacy have created primacy of India in the comity of nations, as India successfully convinced the world how correct is its foreign policy towards its goal to build up a harmonious mutually cooperative South Asia.
Minister for external affairs Sushma Swaraj’s clarion calls last Thursday to the Gulf nations’ foreign ministers, followed by quality Track-II Diplomacy and governance by the national security advisers this time saved a huge social crisis. It may not be wrong to think that there was indeed some Track-II diplomacy underneath the official campaigns through the decision-makers in the Gulf region. Swaraj’s experience from both of Vajpayee’s Governments (May 16, 1996 to June 1, 1996, and 1999-2004) might have worked as an excellent tool for quality governance.
The Minister’s quick moves on Track-I diplomacy also seem to have convinced saner world of the promise that India would be taking up issues in international relations more effectively in coming months, than what the UPA-II governance could do in the recent times.
Quality in governance of State affairs in India has often been a casualty during the last decades between post-Indira Gandhi and pre-Narasimha Rao times, and also in the UPA-II governance due to a malady called vox populi. Decisions were often affected by the thoughts of ifs and buts and populism. India needs to disseminate clear messages to stymie adventurism against it and its people. Apparently, this concept almost puts in place liberal realism in statecraft.
It is because, for India, it indeed has been a very difficult job to handle the fractured societies as in the Persian Gulf, where as per the accepted rule the military might alone gets the primacy and not democracy. The effect of Arab Spring is in its nascent stage, and would likely to take long time to settle down with democratic results.
Changes always came very slow in all civilisations in the past, but it came in definite trickles. Track-II diplomacy, therefore, is the hard nut that this Government has been able to mix with the Track-I diplomacy, and cleverly so. (IPA)

G. Srinivasan
Few would believe their ears when the  Union Railway Minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda presenting the maiden railway budget of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance Government frankly conceded   that an organization of big magnitude “vested with varied responsibilities is expected to earn like a commercial enterprise but serve like a welfare organization”. Stretching the imagery further he hit the nail on the head by stating that these two objectives are “like two rails of the railway track, which though travel together but never meet”. What a candid confession that the system he is presiding over had been milked arid over the years by successive Railway Ministers who preceded him so much so that social service obligation of providing concessional carriage of both passenger and the freight  had bled the system black and blue, leaving little resources for maintenance and expansion of the network!
Running as many as 12,617 trains to carry over 23 million passengers per day connecting more than 7172 stations spread across the sub-continent, the Railways run more than 7421 freight trains carrying about three million tones every day. But the finances of this gargantuan mode of public transport have been worsening over the last several years. For instance in 2013-14, gross traffic receipts  were Rs 1,39,558 crore and total working expenses were Rs 1,30,321 crore, working out an unsustainable operating ratio of almost 94 per cent. This meant that the railways spend 94 paisa out of every rupee earned, leaving just six paisa as surplus. Even this insubstantial surplus is persistently on the wane, thanks to non-revision of fare.
After discharging obligatory dividend to the General Exchequer and lease charges for the massive borrowings the system had been drawing from its outfit Indian Railway Finance Corporations (IRFC) for rail-related work programmes, was Rs 11,754 crore way back in 2007-08 but is estimated to be Rs 602 crore in the current financial year, the Railway Minister bemoaned with concern. He rightly raised the relevant point and flagged off the genuine concern that this meager surplus so generated is required to finance the Plan outlay for safety, capacity expansion, infrastructure, improving passenger services and amenities.
Conscious of the need to outline a broad vision and fix the faults before the system broke, the railways had to resort to pre-budget impost and in a sort of “course correction” the railways undertook fare revision in late June which will bring an additional revenue of about Rs 8000 crore. However, as the vision to complete the Golden Quadrilateral network alone demands more than Rs 9 lakh crore with introducing even one bullet train exacting Rs 60,000 crore, the system cannot just lean on effecting hike in fare and freight rates and burden the public to realize these funds. That is why the new rail budget has struck a different tack in a major resource mobilization bid by willfully skirting the much-trodden path of announcing only a slew of new projects and glitzy programmes that are of a mere cosmetic   nature without lending any substance or real value to the carrier even as it confronts challenges from other public modes of transport that are competitive in terms of price and quality of service.
Mr. Gowda is right in tapping investible surplus funds of railways public sector undertakings in infrastructure projects which can generate attractive returns to these PSUs. It is also proposed to lure private investment in rail infrastructure through domestic and foreign investment as the future growth of railway sector relies heavily on availability of funds with internal revenue sources and Government funding having reached their limits. It is gratifying that the Ministry of Railways is seeking Cabinet nod to allow FDI in rail sector and one can confidently feel that the usual hedges and reservations from Home Ministry on sensitive sectors do not become a dampener to prospective investors. It is incumbent upon the railways to lend clarity on their proposed opening up of rail sector in core or non-core areas.
Coupled with other announcements such as near plan holiday approach, prioritizing and setting timelines for completion of the ongoing projects, strategic partnerships and transparency in procurements, aggressive indigenization of imported products and encouraging development of locomotives, coaches and wagon leasing market would go a long way in corporatizing the transport behemoth so that its commercial viability would complement its social obligation cost.
Another important feature in the rail budget is that though there has been a lot of talk about public private partnership for raising resources, the railways have not been successful so far in raising substantial resources through this mode.  However, Mr. Gowda has said that it would be his endeavour to pursue this in right earnest as “it is our target that bulk of future projects will be financed through PPP mode, including high-speed rail which requires huge investments”. Analysts contend that this time around the railways would devise suitable contractual commitments for roping in private investment especially of capital intensive long-gestation rail projects.
The Railway Minister deserves plaudits for resisting the temptation to announce a slew of new projects or programmes which only spread the sparse resources thinly without achieving any meaningful outcome.  Mr. Gowda is not off the mark when he succinctly stated that “it is investment in doubling and tripling to decongest the over-utilized network, which brings money to Railways”. If only the pressure groups or ginger groups of MPs, MLAs and political parties realize that construction of new lines most of the times do not even meet operational cost as there is no commensurate demand, such pleas should cease for the better financial soundness of the system.
A major but buried reform measure unveiled by Mr. Gowda pertains to structural reforms of the Railway Board which due to overlapping roles of policy formulation and implementation has become unwieldy. Though he did not disclose any details about how he is going to undertake this other than hinting that he proposes to separate these two functions, the Railway Board for all practical purposes had been so far not a Board-managed body but a Minister-driven one. How the functional autonomy so crucial in management of the operations of a great public transport organization is going to be ensured without much meddling by the Ministers or the Government would ultimately decide how successful the Indian Railways would emerge in the years ahead in managing the conflict of being a commercial organization with a sustainable social obligation? (IPA)