Rising Wisely

Harsha, a research engineer at CSTEP has shared his views on the unconference “Mobilicity” organized by praja.in and CiSTUP.

It was a new experience for me to attend such a conference, an ‘un-conference’. Though I have attend one other un-conference before, it was a very different experience as the topic of discussion did not only involve only a specialized group of engineers. This topic involved discussions to solve a common everyday social problem experienced by every citizen. The event was also unique as the audience not only consisted of academics but also, politicians, bureaucrats, social activists, students and most importantly concerned citizens.

The discussions involved the management of the city roads and other transport infrastructure to ease the every day frustration felt by the general public due to the current dysfunctional transportation system. However, I cannot get away with just describing the problem as stated above involves many technical difficulties that was faced by engineers ever since the first civilizations decided to cease being nomads and settle down.

The day started off with a panel discussion with a set of panelists who represented the city municipality, the public transport, an elected representative, the police, a bureaucrat, a scientist/social activist and a academic/entrepreneur. The initial view expressed by each panelist in the first round was predictable. However as the audience got involved the discussion started to become interesting. Some of the important points that were discussed are as follows:

• The municipality which is responsible for all the public works needs to be more transparent in its function and also completely open to criticism form any concerned citizen. The importance of this point was highly emphasized.

• The political establishment need to be less paranoid about loss of control and has to empower the local governing bodies which interact with citizens daily. It was pointed out that the greatest threat to even the best designed policies was implementation and accountability.

• The public as whole is not sensitive to thinking for the greater good of the community and needs to be educated.

After a charged panel discussion, the un-conference took off in full swing. The highlight of all discussions was the recently released draft of the transport policy for the entire state of Karnataka. Various parts of the draft, its impact and its (numerous) shortcomings were discussed.

CSTEP presented a simple turn based game to demonstrate that the transportation system is actually a complex system and is also part of a larger problem of city planning (A city is a complex entity in itself). The game demonstrated that the problem has to be tackled as a whole and not by individual departments concerned with only parts of the problem. The game demonstrated the shortcomings of such a approach, a chaotic pattern to city development . The game demonstrated the importance of communication between the different stake holders (which included citizens). The choice of a game for a presentation was ideal as it not only allows a diverse audience to appreciate the complexity of the problem, it also engages the audience and plays on their curiosity. The feedback obtained will be invaluable for building better models.

As the day drew to a close I realized that the discussions (except CSTEP’s ) were a little unsettling for me as each solution or direction of development came with a long time-line attached in terms of its implementation and complex systems have a sneaky habit of changing their nature!

Indian Farmer

Imagine an India where there are only 2 million farmers, compared to today with hundreds of millions of farmers.  Impossible? Not for the reasons of not growing enough food.

On a long flight to a conference, I watched the brilliant movie Home (2009), a French documentary (with dubbing into English) on our home planet.  It stated something that was dumbfounding: There are only 3 million farmers in the US, and they grow enough grain to feed 2 billion people.

So, if one had similar farming practices in India, one could theorize that 1.7 million farmers could grow enough grain to feed the nation!

Of course there are a number of issues with this including:

1)  Are US farming practices doable in the Indian (or any other nation) context? Both from a resource and sustainability perspective, and also from a livelihood/political economy perspective?

2)  What would such cropping mean for market equilibria?

In the US, the vast majority of the grain goes not to people but for animal feedstock.  India doesn’t eat nearly as much meat, which is a very good think from the environment’s perspective.  (A UN FAO study indicates that animal rearing leads to some 18% of g greenhouse gas emissions, though some believe the true number is MUCH higher).

The first question that needs to be analyzed is productivity of the land, and farming acreage.  It turns out that the data are mixed – neither can one say big farms are always more productive (yield per hectare) or smaller farms are better – one sees both ends of the spectrum.  So, if we assume the total available farming area remains the same, with vastly less farmers, it might be possible to have the same yield.  Of course, this would be highly resource intensive, especially fertilizer and mechanization. Farms would be some two orders of magnitude larger, on average.  All else being equal, farm revenues would increase commensurately.

[To compare, the average farm in the US is roughly 449 acres (per US Statistical Abstract); Indian farms are, median size, perhaps ~1-2 acres, with the average perhaps a tad higher ].

It’s a separate question whether one wants such a future.  From discussions with people active in rural India, farming is not thought of as a viable livlihood, let alone prestigious.  Maybe reducing farming sector employment is what we want.  ONLY IF we can have an orderly transition away from being a farming economy. And there are enough productive, sustainable jobs for the people who would no longer be farming.

Rahul Tongia

DISCLAIMER: The link above to WorldWatch’s study on animal farming should not be seen as an endorsement of their findings.