Stories of hope

Jose was 22 when he landed at the Palliative Care centre in Calicut.

A few days before he died, he was at his regular clinic undergoing a routine check for his carcinoma, when his doctor inserted the now familiar instrument up his nose for a procedure. Jose sneezed, in a reflex action to the irritation caused by the instrument and splattered blood across his doctor’s shirt. The doctor, visibly upset, admonished Jose for spoiling his shirt and asked him to leave. Humiliated and depressed, Jose walked out of his clinic feeling quite worthless. A patient who had overheard this exchange in the clinic reached out to Jose and told him about the Pain and Palliative Care clinic and told him that perhaps he might be shown more compassion for his condition there.


Jose knew he didn’t have much time left to live when he arrived at the centre but in the few weeks and months of dedicated attention and immense love showered on him by the volunteers gave him a new hope in life. He started volunteering himself, setting a trend somewhat in being a "patient-volunteer", and as his stamina improved, he started to contribute to the centre’s activities. He also started chronicling his amazing transformation from someone who desperately wanted to die to someone who was giving others the hope to live.

Jose didn’t live long. Despite his brave battle against the disease, it did get the better of him. But his notes, that were subsequently published by the Mathrubhumi (Malayalam daily) in a serialized form captured the attention of readers and became popular enough for the publishers to release the series of articles into a book. The royalty proceeds from the book support Jose’s mother to this day.

I heard this, and many other mind numbing stories at the Institute of Palliative Medicine where I spent the weekend trying to help them create a process to document their incredible 17 year old history and develop a road map for the next 5 years, along with Gopinath Parayil. The objective was to help the team of volunteers, old and new to share a common vision and continue the momentum they have built in the last few years and inspire others to replicate what they have managed to achieve.

As a young nurse who is a relatively new member in the programme commented, “I almost feel guilty that I was looking at what I do merely as a job. I feel proud to be a small part of what I think is a historical journey, and I promise I will do every bit to keep this legacy alive”!

India has been rated as among having the worst ratings for End of Life care, but the Palliative Care movement in Kerala makes it impossible for any report in the world to ignore its impact. As the BBC recently, and the Economist in a report a few months back noted, the Kerala model of Palliative Care is the best in the world, mainly because its community-led and largely self sustaining. The recently won recognition of being a WHO Collaborative Centre is just incidental.

It’s one of those projects that we at niiti consulting feel proud to be associated with, and makes me say a small thank you under my breath that I get the opportunity to do what I do!

If you are inspired by this initiative and want to be associated with it, as a volunteer or a contributor, visit www.concernwithoutborders.org and learn how you can make a difference.

Small is beautiful

(Deonar Garbage Dump, Mumbai)

Solid Waste Management is one of the important obligatory functions of the urban local bodies in India. Consider the case of Mumbai - along with the neighboring areas of Navi Mumbai and Thane, Mumbai is a city of about 19 million people. Citing 2008 figures, it is the world’s fifth most populous metropolitan area and currently, Mumbai generates waste to the tune of approximately 9000 tonnes per day.

The MCGM has the Advance Locality Management Scheme (ALM), which involves residents who segregate compost and recycle waste locally. The basic principle of the ALM is ‘self governance’. The main element of the partnership is the segregation of garbage into dry and wet waste, handing over the dry waste to rag pickers and composting of the wet waste within the locality. ALMs fit perfectly between the formal and informal waste management system. ALMs are formed streetwise or small area wise and waste collection and street sweeping are often considered the priority focus of ALMs.

Mumbai’s per capita waste generation rate of 0.5 kg/person/day is higher than the national average. Although the collection efficiency is reported to be as high as 90%, almost half of the city’s 19 million people live in slums, some of which do not have access to solid waste services. The pressing problem for Mumbai is also its acute shortage of land. Due to the lack of appropriate implementation and effort by the government, as well the apathy of the citizens, the city has become a fertile ground for an impending solid waste management crisis.

Though ALMs were considerably active bodies a few years back, much has changed and not many registered ALMs are functional now. Even the reality around Mumbai has changed. People living in rented flats who move in and out of the city do not participate in regular ALM activities. However, some ALM bodies have been active for over a decade. Advanced Locality Management and Networking Action Committee (ALMANAC), a federation of ALMs is one of them. Organized by Rajkumar Sharma who is a believer in waste management, ALMANAC continues to function in the suburb of Chembur. Sharma aims to create a model in Chembur which can be replicated in different areas. To know more, help or participate, you can contact Raj Kumar Sharma on 9820989310 or almanac.rks@gmail.com.

Liability and Compliance in Climate Change

While there is no doubt that Climate Change is a global problem, in order to overcome it, it needs to be broken into blocks. However, that is easier said than done. In attempting to accomplish this, a lot many aspects of Climate Change are ignored and do not receive adequate funding or research. Two of the many such pertinent yet ignored aspects are compliance and liability.

Even within these domains, it is has been difficult to achieve harmonization - international versus national versus local being the main spectrum of difference. Sovereignty issues lead to most international agreements having a weak and flexible compliance system. This has its advantages but non-compliance results in countries’ losing faith in the agreement itself. Such is also the case with liability risks and related insurance.

Keeping this in mind, the Centre for Science and Environment(CSE) has organized the International Conference On Compliance And Liability In Climate Change Negotiations which will bring forth the cross-sectoral nature of compliance and liability issues and at the same time, generate discourse around these issues.

CSE 'brings experts from across the globe to discuss these challenges and illuminate upon solutions that we must work towards. The panel comprises renowned environmental lawyers, professors and climate negotiators who will be facing NGOs, campaigners, researchers and together will try to find answers to one of the most challenging quandaries that climate change harbingers.'

Sea change?

There was a week in the beginning of January when Delhi was colder than London!! And in Europe, train services and airport operations came to a grinding halt because of a prolonged freezing weather. Climate change? Perhaps.
What comes as a sea of change is in the attitude of many emerging economies towards this issue, the blow-hot blow-cold opinions on Kyoto protocol notwithstanding. There is a very interesting story in a recent edition of The Economist on the seriousness with which the world's largest economy presently views this topic.
The fact that the world order is perhaps shifting from being acutely unipolar has never been more evident that at Cancun, where largely due to India’s efforts, references to “equity” and “equitable access to sustainable development” were included in the “Shared Vision for Long-term Cooperative Action” to mitigate climate change. Also, a Cancun Adaptation Framework was agreed upon. It exhorts developing countries to prepare and implement national adaptation plans and at the same time, calls upon developed countries to provide finance, technology and capacity building support for the same. The objective of the Cancun Adaptation Framework is to enhance action on adaptation, including through international cooperation and coherent consideration of matters relating to adaptation under the Convention. Ultimately enhanced action on adaptation seeks to reduce vulnerability and build resilience in developing country.
The best way any country can build resilience and reduce its carbon imprint is to find alternate energy options that are scalable that would offset the increasing energy consumption.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol draw a clear distinction between the respective obligations of developed and developing countries. Since developed countries are primarily responsible for causing climate change, the protocol lays down binding emission reduction commitments for each developed country party. Quite appropriately, developing countries are not required to accept such commitments. Their mitigation actions are of a purely voluntary nature (and rightly so) and they are not accountable to any international authority, except in regard to projects that receive financial support from such an authority.
But we have an opportunity to make a big difference through small changes. Question is how fast will these changes happen?

Wake up to Climate Change

The Cancun climate talks resulted in some progress especially in the area of financial agreements made to preserve forests. However, in 2010, the world saw another drought strike the Amazon forests. The forests currently form the lungs of the earth absorbing more than one-quarter of the world's atmospheric carbon, making them critical to the discussion about global warming.

Scientists and researchers have estimated that 8.5 billion tonnes of CO₂ will be released into the earth’s atmosphere due to the absence of the trees which were once part of the Amazon. What is worrisome is that there was a similar drought that occurred in 2005. Climatologists claim that the droughts of 2005 and 2010 are consistent with the idea that global warming will cause more droughts in future, emit more carbon, and potentially lead to a climate change crisis.

Though this news has appeared in through several channels and in mainstream media, the enormity of the situation does not strike till our own experience of extreme weather conditions, unavailability of crops and extinction of local plants and animal species. An interesting graphic (given below) by InfographicWorld (representing the deforestation of the Amazon), provides a stark wake up call.

Sustainable change or no change at all

A lot of us working in the sustainability space know the importance of and necessity for change. Change in policy to support development, change in attitudes for increased awareness of problems, change in technology for better outreach and responsiveness, we all feel and express the need for change.

And we’re optimistic – change has happened in our time and we’ve celebrated it. However, sometimes I am lead to believe that may be we haven’t protested enough. We have moved from cloth bags to plastic bags, from dried leaf packaging to synthetic packaging, from public buses to cars. We celebrated this change, reveled in it. Now, we reconsider it – we ask people to be more responsible citizens by turning towards sustainable alternatives. May be, we should have treaded carefully in the first place.

I write this hoping that we have the foresight to understand the externalities of our progress, our change, and make our decisions rightfully and knowledgeably. I hope that we truly comprehend when change is sustainable and when not because if change is not sustainable, is it change at all?

(Image source: Gettyimages)

Owning a city

I have loved Mumbai from the moment I knew it. I loved it from Bambai to Bombay to Mumbai. I grew up all across the city and if you know Mumbai, you’d know that it is no mean feat.

The entire city belonged to me as I could navigate from north to south, mouth bus numbers and train timings. I knew it like the back of my hand. I knew its secrets. As the city expanded, my expertise decreased, secrets were not secrets anymore and I recognized the city in pockets. If you ask me how well I know my city now, I would perhaps cite in details only the area in which I live.

I grew up cycling on the roads of Mumbai. There was space for me as I used my pudgy legs to drive up the slopes of the suburbs. Now, there is none. I yearn to find myself a spot to stand where I would go untouched and unrushed. Cities and their characters change over time and the biggest and the mightiest of cities have such a tumultuous history. Globalization has done us many goods but in the process we have lost our localized selves to our globalized ones. How dedicated are we at working towards local problems. How effective are local management models in a generation where most of our leaders only understand virtual communities. Also, is the theory of local management applicable in a time where rural-urban migration is at the highest? How can one expect someone to feel instantly rooted and responsible in a city where he has arrived solely to survive?

May be it is time to reinvent the wheels. Educate a new generation of individuals with insight of the new problems of our day. Starting with the bigger question – who’s Mumbai is it anyway?

Water Water....but where??

I had a wonderful childhood growing up in a small West Delhi colony characterized by its haphazard roads, unruly traffic and aggressive residents. When people in a community are faced with the same kind of issues every day, they tend to be closer and more supportive of each other. One of my most striking memories of growing up was the routine of filling up water in buckets before we went to school because the water supply was rather erratic and one never knew whether one could take a refreshing shower when one returned home after a hard day’s work. And this was the case in many parts of Delhi nearly a quarter of a century ago.All one has to do is visit any random colony in the so-called new-age Delhi with swanky apartments with the latest gadgets or even my beloved little colony in the quaint West Delhi area and one ubiquitous thing one can view almost everywhere is the “borewell” or “paani ka motor” as it is called in many parts. Fresh water supply is almost unheard of in the municipal water system. The water pumped out with the “motor” is increasingly hard causing drinking water companies to thrive and price their wares at a premium. If this is the case at the turn of the decade in the 21st Century, I wonder what urban citizens in Delhi will do in 20 years time to meet their water needs.More importantly, is anyone even giving this a thought today?

Rethinking business behavior

It is almost an impossible task to change business behavior when there is a set (and successful, if I may add) way in which we have been operating for a very very long time. Most of us are not naturally altruistic people: we think about improving the self, be it personal or organizational before we think of the larger society. The spirit of self-preservation has become a habit, ingrained into us over the years.

Abundant and inexpensive energy has enabled the world to grow sevenfold in just two hundred years. Cheap oil fuelled the Industrial Revolution and the information revolution; it provided the inputs for the Green Revolution. All of these developments helped increase standards of health and living. However, the growth in demand for energy is increasing and the world and its’ businesses are waking up to the realization, that shortages of energy and its’ resulting price increases may make it impossible for economic growth to continue.

It is also true that in the last decade or so, the world has become a different place to do business. Globalization has integrated the world and technology has bridged distances. And what we do in a small business, in a small nook, in the corner of one country has a fairly significant impact on some other part of the country or event in the globe. How an employee in one location is treated is heard faster by her counterpart in another location than her boss who might be sitting a desk away from her. Or how a cotton crop produced in a location in Thailand has impact on the sales of a garment produced with that cotton in Germany.

And because of this it becomes imperative for businesses to be seen not just as socially relevant, but also BE socially relevant and be a part of the change. It is that self-preservation that will drive businesses to bring about a change in their business models - to do social good not because it is nice to, but because they cannot survive anymore if they don't.