Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi advocated, “greater South-South cooperation in addressing climate change, biodiversity and land degradation.” Courtesy: GCIS

By Joydeep Gupta
Sep 10 2019 (IPS)

At his speech at the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) summit in Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi emphasised South-South cooperation and technology solutions, but issues of land ownership dog the ongoing negotiations.

As the second week of the UNCCD Conference of Parties (COP) kicked off in Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi highlighted South-South cooperation and issues of land degradation.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the high level segment, he said that it was increasingly accepted that climate change impacts were leading to a loss of land, plants and animal species, and that it was causing, “land degradation of various kinds (including) rise of sea levels, wave action, and erratic rainfall and storms”.

All of these issues have a significant impact on India, and other developing countries, and as such, the Prime Minister advocated, “greater South-South cooperation in addressing climate change, biodiversity and land degradation.”

He said India would act both internally and externally on this. Domestically, he said that India was increasing its commitment to restore 21 million hectares of land by 2030 to 26 million hectares, an increase of 5 million hectares. The co-benefit of this would be that it would help create a carbon sink for 2.5-3 billion tonnes of carbon through increased tree cover.

On external action, he said that India was, “happy to help other friendly countries cost-effective satellite and space technologies,” and that it would be creating a Centre for Excellence at the Indian Council for Forestry Research and Education in Dehradun to promote South-South cooperation, where other countries could access technology and training.

Hard questions

Nevertheless, this avoids some of the hard questions that have been dogging the UNCCD COP. Who owns the land? Who is responsible when the land is no longer able to support a livelihood, and a farmer is forced to migrate?

These are not questions anyone thought about when they launched the UNCCD 25 years ago. But since degradation of land due to a variety of reasons precedes desertification, these questions are increasingly worrying policymakers, especially from developing countries. At the ongoing New Delhi summit, the issues have come to the fore, and have divided governments along the lines of developed and developing nations, a process familiar to observers of UN climate negotiations.

Despite Narendra Modi’s speech at the high level segment, these issues remained unresolved, with bureaucrats awaiting instructions from the 100-odd ministers gathered at the Indian capital.

The NGOs who work on farming issues are clear that land degradation cannot be halted unless farmers around the world have guaranteed rights over the land on which they grow food for everyone. This may sound like a no-brainer, but estimates show that globally only around 12% of all farmers can claim legal rights over the land they till. To this, experts would like to add the land held in various forms of community ownership, sometimes by indigenous communities. But few countries have strong laws to protect such ownership.

In the first week of the New Delhi summit, developing country governments have wanted this issue of land tenure being discussed at the UNCCD forum, and developed countries – led by the US delegation – have opposed the inclusion. The industrialised countries say it is an issue of different laws in different countries, and discussing it in the UN is not going to help.

Land tenure

But, with land degradation being inextricably tied up with climate change and biodiversity, the urgency of the situation may force UNCCD to discuss land tenure in this and future meetings, and to come up with possible solutions.

The solutions are not always as straightforward as they may seem, warned UNCCD chief scientist Baron Orr in a conversation with thethirdpole.net. Think of what a farmer – especially a smallholder farmer – is likely to do if offered a high price for land. Most of them are likely to sell, as evidenced by the mushrooming malls, offices and homes all around the current summit venue, which was all farmland just about a decade ago. And what happens to our food supply if this replicated globally?

Land tenure is important to halt degradation because people naturally provide better protection to land they own. But it is not enough. A farmer faced with competitors using chemical fertilisers and pesticides is not going to move to organic farming just because that is better for the soil.

Most farmers cannot afford to do that. They need help, as was seen in India when the state of Sikkim pledged to do only organic farming. Sikkim is a relatively small state – replicating that kind of help on a global or even national scale may need far more money than is available for the purpose, as Orr pointed out.

Land tenure is also an area where women face discrimination in a big way. Data journalism site IndiaSpend reported that 73.2% of the country’s rural women workers are farmers, but have only 12.8% of India’s land holdings.

Migration: the hot potato

Farmers being forced to migrate because their farms can no longer support them due to land degradation and climate change is the hottest potato of them all. Developed countries are united in opposing this major “push” factor in migration, insisting that people migrate only due to “pull” factors such as better economic opportunities. Developing countries, especially those from the Sahel belt stretching from the western to the eastern coast of Africa, point to numerous instances where farmers are forced off land gone barren, and insist on this issue being discussed by UNCCD.

Former UNCCD chief Monique Barbut has said almost all Africans trying to move to Europe are doing so due to land degradation and drought. Without putting it in words that strong, current UNCCD chief Ibrahim Thiaw has backed the inclusion of migration in the conference agenda.

As host government and conference president, India may have to use all its diplomatic skills if this knot is to be untied during this summit – an especially tricky manoeuvre because India has consistently refused to accept that immigrants from Bangladesh are entering this country because their farms can no longer support them.

And it is not just migration across countries. At a meeting organised on the sidelines of the summit by local government organisation ICLEI, mayor after mayor got up to say farmers are coming into their cities in increasing numbers due to land degradation and climate change, but they have no budget to provide any housing, water, electricity, roads or any form of livelihood to these millions of immigrants.

Still, developed country delegations insist UNCCD is not the right forum to discuss migration. What all 196 governments and the European Union agree upon in the next day or two remains to be seen.

Human efforts

Prakash Javadekar, India’s Minister of Environment, Forests and Climate Change and the conference president, had said at the opening, “If human actions have created the problems of climate change, land degradation and biodiversity loss, it is the strong intent, technology and intellect that will make (the) difference. It is human efforts that will undo the damage and improve the habitats. We meet here now to ensure that this happens.” This foreshadowed what the Prime Minister said today.

He pointed out that 122 countries, among them Brazil, China, India, Nigeria, Russia and South Africa, which are among the largest and most populous nations on earth, “have agreed to make the Sustainable Development Goal of achieving land degradation neutrality a national target.”

Thiaw drew attention to the warnings sounded by recent scientific assessments and the growing public alarm at the frequency of weather-related disasters such as drought, forest fires, flash floods and soil loss. He urged delegates to be mindful of the opportunities for change that are opening up, and take action. The response of governments from developed countries will decide how useful the current summit will be.

The world is in trouble otherwise. The current pace of land transformation is putting a million species at risk of extinction. One in four hectares of this converted land is no longer usable due to unsustainable land management practices. These trends have put the well-being of 3.2 billion people around the world at risk. In tandem with climate change, this may force up to 700 million people to migrate by 2050.

This story was first published on thethirdpole.net and can be found here.

Excerpt:

The Indian government put an end to large scale protests by revoking the autonomy of Indian-administered Kashmir – a status provided for under the Indian Constitution. Thousands of troops were deployed and the valley region faced unprecedented lockdown. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

By Abdullah Yusuf
Sep 9 2019 (IPS)

August is immensely important in the history of the Asian subcontinent, marking the month that India and Pakistan gained independence from the British in 1947. Now, in 2019, it has once again proved momentous, when, ten days before India’s Independence day celebrations, prime minister Narendra Modi’s government revoked the autonomy of Indian-administered Kashmir – a status provided for under the Indian Constitution.

This latest move was a manifesto pledge from Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which claims that Kashmir’s autonomy has hindered its development while fostering an area of thriving terrorism and smuggling.

Soon, thousands of troops were deployed and the valley region faced unprecedented lockdown. Experts say that Modi’s move to tether the Muslim majority of Kashmir is a gamble that could trigger conflict with Pakistan while reigniting an insurgency that has already cost tens of thousands of lives.

Kashmir: a brief history

Until 1947, Kashmir was a territorially well-defined and functional state that had existed for a century before its seizure by the British in 1846. The British decolonisation of the subcontinent in 1947 was instrumental in creating disorder that pushed Kashmir into a repeated cycle of war and stalemate between Pakistan and India, which have both claimed the region as sovereign territory for the last 70 years.

Today, Kashmir’s geopolitical position and glacial water reserves – which provide fresh water and hydro-electric power to millions – add an extra dimension to the existing sectarian and ideological conflict between India and Pakistan over this small northern region.

The Kashmir issue has resulted in three wars between these two countries – in 1947, 1965 and 1999 – triggering numerous UN Security Council Resolutions – which unequivocally call for the Kashmiris’ right to self-determination.

Modi’s Hindu nationalist project

Many within the region feel that Modi’s BJP is brazenly trying to change Kashmir’s ethnic composition to disadvantage India’s Muslim minority by encouraging more Hindus into the region. Since the revocation of Article 370 (which assured the region’s autonomy), Indian Kashmiri leaders who vehemently opposed the decision – including two former chief ministers – have been sent to jail.

Modi’s government has a history of stoking tensions between Hindus and Muslims, with its political rule now focused on “Hindutva”, which translates roughly as “Hindu-ness”, and reframes Hinduism as an identity rather than a theology or religion.

Modi has fostered Hindu nationalism through anti-Islamic rhetoric, accusing Muslim men of attempting to change India’s demographics by seducing Hindu women, as well as encouraging lynching of Muslims falsely accused of eating beef (from the sacred Hindu cow) in BJP controlled states. Clearly, these are tactics designed to expand the notion of Hindutva and further isolate the Muslim population within India. Targeting Kashmir is a crucial part of the strategy.

Dangerous tensions and nuclear options

In the wake of India’s decision to revoke Kashmir’s special status, there are two key questions.

First, will it be beneficial to Kashmir as claimed by Modi’s government? The situation on the ground would suggest not. After a month of curfew and lockdown, protests have turned violent. The Indian government has been unable to restore peace in the valley despite the increasing atrocities. According to news reports, 4,000 people have been arrested since the territory lost its status.

Second, how is the situation affecting the already tense relations between India and Pakistan? India’s land grab comes just five months after a breakdown in relations following claims by India that a Pakistani-based suicide bomber killed 44 Indian soldiers in the Kashmir region, leading to airstrikes by both sides. The situation threatens to reignite this conflict with both countries cautioning the world about the nuclear option.

Addressing a joint session of Pakistan’s parliament on August 6, prime minister Imran Khan briefed lawmakers on the steps his government had taken towards peace in the region. But he maintained the situation in Indian-occupied Kashmir would deteriorate and its neighbour would blame and attack Pakistan.

Days later, Indian defence minister Rajnath Singh stated that India is committed to “no first use” of nuclear weapons, but future policy is dependent on the ever-evolving circumstances. These sentiments have led to international debate over the possibility of nuclear weapons being unleashed.

Parallels with East Timor

With this nuclear threat ever present, the situation in Kashmir is now one of the most dangerous in the world. Since the two countries have consistently failed to make any progress, external help from the international community and the UN is crucial in resolving the conflict and preventing further escalation.

As the world witnessed in the case of East Timor in 1999, independence from Indonesia after two decades of bloodshed was achieved following a referendum held under the stewardship of the UN. This result was not accepted by Indonesia, which launched a scorched-earth campaign, killing more than 1,500 Timorese, displacing nearly half the population, and razing much of East Timor to the ground.

The subsequent progression towards independence and peacebuilding was facilitated by external bodies such as the UN-mandated International Force in East Timor and the Transitional Administration in East Timor, underscoring the importance of support from both the UN and the international community.

The UN didn’t achieve success overnight, but endured through increasing international pressure, combined with a change in the Suharto government. Soon, Indonesia found itself falling out of favour with the international community.

There are parallels here for the Kashmir situation. Although progress may be slow while Modi’s populist BJP remains in power, pressure from the international community would likely go a long way towards pulling both countries back from the brink. In the meantime, while Modi tries to remake India in the BJP’s Hindutva image, for Kashmiris the struggle for self-determination goes on.

Abdullah Yusuf is a lecturer in politics at the University of Dundee

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the article here.

Excerpt:

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is shown here being showered with rose petals after his nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was declared winner in the country’s national elections. Source: Narendra Modi Facebook Page

By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, May 25 2019 (IPS)

“We worked for the poor and they voted us back to power,” was the explanation that Prime Minister Narendra Modi made to newly-elected legislators on Saturday, May 25, on the spectacular win scored by his nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India’s just concluded general elections.

Modi’s statement appeared refreshingly simple when seen against the plethora of theories and analyses on the second electoral defeat in a row that the BJP delivered to the venerable Indian National Congress party that led India to independence from British colonial rule in 1947 and had become almost synonymous with governance in the years since.

“More than anything else the election was the victory of Modi’s political leadership,” Ajay Mehra, professor of politics and currently senior fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi, tells IPS. “Since the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984 the leadership quotient has been missing in Indian politics.”

“Modi was astute enough to understand this vacuum while the Congress party singularly failed to restore the leadership quotient when it had the chance while in power during 2004—2014 under Manmohan Singh, who was more manager than political leader,” Mehra says.

Modi’s main opponent, Rahul Gandhi, the son, grandson and great-grandson of former Congress prime ministers did make a bid to fill the leadership vacuum in the run up to the elections but “it was all too little too late,” says Mehra.

According Mehra, Modi never lost an opportunity to project himself as a strong and powerful leader. And the greatest opportunity came in the form of a deadly suicide-bombing attack on an armed forces convoy in Kashmir on Feb. 14, that left 40 troops dead.

Modi, who could never be faulted for his sense of timing, waited until Feb 26, a date close to the general elections, to order Indian air force jets to carry out retaliatory bombing on a militant camp in Balakot, deep inside Pakistani territory.

The Balakot bombing added hugely to Modi’s image as a great nationalist leader ready to defend the country against internal and external threats without hesitation, says Mehra.

Throughout the long and arduous election campaign across the country that followed, Modi repeatedly harped on the Balakot bombing to audience tuned to the idea of Pakistan as a long-standing enemy country which armed and financed terrorist groups tasked with the objective of wresting Muslim-majority Kashmir from Indian control.

It appears that the Gandhi and Congress party leaders learned no lessons from the defeat in 2014 when Modi’s one-time occupation of being a tea-stall vendor in a railway station was made fun of and used as proof that he was incapable of running a large and complex country like India.

This time around Modi’s description of himself as a ‘chowkidar’ (or watchman) taking care of the country’s interests was converted by the Congress party into the slogan ‘Chowkidar chor hai’ (the watchman is a thief) in reference to accusation that a deal to buy Rafael fighter jets from France was tainted and rigged to favour crony capitalist interests.

But, like the tea vendor jibes, the chowkidar slogans backfired with the mass of desperately poor Indian voters identifying all the more with Modi than with the half-Italian Gandhi and his sister Priyanka, who lent a hand in the election campaigning and addressed political rallies.

The campaign focused on the Rafael deal also had the effect of turning the electoral battle into one that was not over issues like rising unemployment, deep agrarian distress and declining manufacture into a personality clash between Gandhi and Modi—one in which the callow Congress leader could only lose to his politically astute and seasoned opponent.

A former spokesperson for the BJP during his long political career, Modi understood the value of building a positive image for himself through carefully arranged political interviews to friendly journalists while scrupulously avoiding the glare of India’s unruly media.

In fact, the only press conference Modi ever gave as prime minister came at the end of his present tenure and that too after elections were safely over. And then he sat through it without uttering a single word but deflecting questions towards his trusted lieutenant and party boss, Amit Shah.

However, Modi was visible everywhere on social media, bear-hugging world leaders one day and sitting in a cave in the snow-clad Himalayas meditating in the saffron robes of Hindu monk the next.

While such images drew derision and mockery from India’s English-speaking elite, the aspirational crowds identified even more with one of them who had made good but was yet rooted in traditional, devoutly Hindu roots.

On Saturday, Modi was elected as leader of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a coalition of right-leaning political parties that includes the BJP. Though the BJP won a majority of seats on its own, gaining 303 out of 542 sets while the Congress party secured just 52 seats. 

In his address to newly-elected parliamentarians of the NDA, Modi said the ‘pro-incumbency vote’ was the result of the faith that people reposed in him. He vowed to take the whole country along into the future, even his enemies. He’s revised his slogan from 2014 to include the latter part on faith: ‘Sab ka saath, sab ka vikas, sab ka vishwas’ or ‘With everyone, for everyone’s development, with everyone’s faith‘. It was regarded as his assurance that everyone, even his political opponents, could trust him.

Modi also warned the new legislators: “Do not resort to a VIP culture–the people don’t like it.”

According to Rajiv Lochan, political commentator and professor of history at Panjab University, Chandigarh, the Congress party lost mainly because it came to be associated with the worst side of traditional India.

“The Congress believes in castes, it believes in religious groups, it believes that Muslims are one single entity as are Hindus and Sikhs,” says Lochan, referring to the parties ‘vote bank’ calculations to take advantage of horizontal and vertical divisions in Indian society.

“The Congress party also represents the feudal aspect in which people are seen as supplicants. All the Congress policies in this election were designed with the presumption that people are supplicants while the scion who has no energy, no intelligence and no abilities is still the boss directing everyone.

“Think of the stories of tiger hunts by Indian princes in colonial times when a servitor would kill the tiger and insist that it was the prince who had done it,” Lochan tells IPS.

“In contrast,” he adds, “the BJP had a Narendra Modi who was full of infectious energy. He had the ability to energise his audience.”

According to Lochan the BJP also ran a “very modernist campaign that was predicated on promising to empower everyone irrespective of caste, religion and family even increasing its support among Muslims from 9 percent to 12 percent, according to the poll surveys.”

“On the whole, I would say, people voted out the bad of traditional India and voted in the good,” says Lochan.