Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the Chairman of the Nobel Laureate, IPCC, when asked to comment on the TATA '1- lakh car' project, in the context of the adverse remarks made by the famed economist, Thomas Friedman (addressing a meeting of the Bangalore International Centre), expressed his wish that TATA's would simultaneously get into public bus transport services. And, TATA's being TATA's would be happy to do so, provided the government facilitated their entry. Also, so would the house of TVS, who anyway started off as public bus service providers in the city of Madurai, but had to give it up because of nationalisation during emergency. The liberalisation thereafter has been token at best, leading to a situation where the organised sector would rather keep away totally, leaving it all in the hands of the 'blue-line' kind of operators, apart from the only slightly better government agencies, with disastrous consequences.
The sad irony however is that whereas it is in vital infrastructure sectors such as public bus transport services that the country so desperately needs the efficiencies of the organised sector players like TATA's and TVS's, in order to contain the ever increasing damage to the environment apart from the cluttering of the cities, they have willy-nilly landed up doing exactly the opposite, by producing more and more cars and motor-bikes.
The Nobel prize bestows a responsibility upon Dr Pachauri to correct this anomaly.
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Panel On Climate Change
Deccan Herald
A few sub-groups will identify the areas of concern in a few days and start collecting available information. “Once this is available, we can start discussing strategies on what needs to be done and how,” said Prof Chandrashekhar.
The departments of forest and industries and water and pollution boards have come forward to colloborate on this effort. The Environmental Management and Policy Research Institute will coordinate and provide administrative support and funds.
The final report of the findings will be prepared in four months. This will have an inventory of issues related to climate change from local to state levels and in all the sectors concerned.
The committee comprising legislators, secretaries from the many departments, academics and scientists agreed that there was a need to improve understanding on the subject.
This also meant bringing many more players into the network like industries and entrepreneurs who have set up CDM projects. The state is among the top few in the numbers of such projects that qualify for carbon credits in the international market for setting up sustainable projects.
Public Debate
The chairman is also keen to have public debates on the subject. Anyone can write to the committee to bring things to its notice, he said. “We need to be more transparent in our workings. This is one such attempt to involve everyone into the act,” he told Deccan Herald. Global warming is a serious issue that needs to be tackled immediately, he added.
The committee would now go in for statutory backing to empower it.
Eventually, the committee will work a policy framework to supplement and harmonise with the national policy to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
As observed by Aravind Jannu, secretary, environment and ecology, all this will take time as it means working across departments, identifying the linkages between disasters and climate changes, prioritising needs, etc.