Sunita Narain: Environment is an election agenda

DOWN TO EARTH/ Yet, for most political leaders it is a factor impeding the pace of development

Elections are a time for learning lessons. And even while the outcome of the 2004 polls is still a few days away, we know already from media reports that the scarcity of water is imprinted across India.

From the villages of high-rainfall areas of Kerala to Meghalaya to the water-stressed regions of central India to the cities everywhere, the want of water is a crying need.

The reports suggest that the scarcity of water is crippling most parts of the country. We know that each drought destroys the abilities of rural communities to cope. It makes them weaker and more disabled to deal with the vagaries of the monsoon.

This way, drought becomes permanent and long-lasting and eats away at the very insides of the nation. Which is why people across the country want their politicians to deliver on this one promise: water to drink and to irrigate their crops.

So, when candidates spar with each other in rich Mumbai, the one thing their votes want to know is why nothing has been done about drinking water.

Politicians then busy themselves pushing responsibility on why the big water project could not be sanctioned to their opponent's table. It ends up that the project was not cleared, in this case, because of environmental concerns. But next time around, vote us to power and we will make sure that these environmental regulations are changed, they promise.

This is not surprising. Environmental concerns, for most political leaders, are viewed as the constraining factor that is impeding the pace of development. What they fail to see is that environment is already a key issue in these coming polls.

I say this because besides water scarcity, the other big all-India issues "" captured in the media, in surveys and opinion polls "" are unemployment and electricity. All three are clearly linked to abysmally poor resource management and governance.

We do not often realise that electricity shortage is linked to water shortage. Electricity is not only needed for industry and households, it is most urgently needed for agriculture. Over 80 per cent of agricultural productivity in the country today is irrigated by groundwater.

With water tables falling precipitously across the country, farmers need electricity to run the pumps to irrigate their lands. More importantly, they need assured electricity at the right time: when crops need water.

Unemployment is not directly linked to environmental degradation. But the answers to employment lie in better management of natural resources "" land, forests, grazing lands and water. Let us be clear.

The formal industrial sector has never been the provider of employment in the country and in the years to come, its contribution with scale and mechanisation, will decline even further.

The service economies "" outsourcing including "" will grow but cannot really absorb jobseekers in a country the size of India. The key to employment lies in building productive and sustainable livelihoods based on natural resources.

The potential is enormous "" from planting trees for pulp to rearing animals for dairy farming to rearing worms for silk and growing medicinal plants for pharmaceutical industries. These are but a few, among many, options to break India shining's growth-without-jobs syndrome.

But even if we agree that these are election issues, the question is, do they determine results as well? That is slightly more difficult to tell. Politicians are fast learners. And even if the pre-election rhetoric is full of the "development" word, I would argue, development is still not on the election agenda.

I say this because, still, very little has been done to deliver on the promise of development that would give everyone food, employment, water, education or health services. Politicians know that real development will require serious reform of the way in which we do business.

They also know they face a serious governance crisis. The abilities of the state to deliver meaningful change have been consistently and successfully disabled. Politicians also realise that they don't have the abilities to handle our rigid and won't-do bureaucracy.

For instance, they know that handling the water crisis will demand policies and practices to optimise the water endowment of each region, so that water management at the level of each settlement is organised to harvest the most and to use in the least wasteful way. This can only be done if local communities are involved in managing water systems.

But building local interests and institutions would require serious and effective institutional reform in which governance is put into the hands of people. But this is a difficult agenda. So, answers are found in promoting a futuristic project to link rivers, which will "solve" water problems in over 10 to 15 years. But it is big and "sells" well.

This then, becomes the pattern of selling the "idea" of development as a dream. But elections, as I said, have a habit of teaching us lessons. Whoever wins must understand that even next time around the issues of pani, bijli and kaam (water, electricity and work) will remain the same and delivering on these will require more reform, not less.