Key note address for Dhanbad seminar.

Key note address for Dhanbad seminar.
Friends, the havoc played by global warming is quite visible. It is bringing erratic changes in climate, making glaciers to melt at a higher speed – thus creating dangers of more floods, bringing Tsunami and so on.. Last year the temperature of some cities went up to 47 degrees C and in the coming years it is expected to rise further. We have to think as to what kind of climate or more importantly, what kind of plannet we are going to leave for our children and grandchildren.
We have all read very fondly a story in our school days. The story of a person who finds a goose which lays one golden egg every day thus making him rich every day surely but slowly. Then he becomes greedy and kills the goose in the hope of taking out all the golden eggs in one go so as to become very rich instantly. But when he cuts the stomach of the geese, there were no eggs.
We all enjoyed reading about the fate of that foolhardy person and said "well -- he deserved the result of his greed." Are we not in the race of committing the same cardinal mistake today?
Let us look at the ways we are irrepairably destroying our environment only to achieve "accelarated growth". Wanton unplanned urbanization which results necessarily from putting agriculture on back foot and heavily promoting industry in preference to agriculture, also leads to excessive fuel consumption for which we are exploiting the subsoil fuel reserves at a faster and still faster rate. For supporting city life we are destroying our green cover. Worse we are cutting and killing our hills, thus destroying an ecosystem which sustains the long-living trees that are required for balancing the seasons and bring timely rains. The silt flowing from these cut-hills will submerge all the river valley life-cycles in coming years. So it is not just the melting of glaciers we are facing but vanishing of our hills to. And I have not yet mentioned the amount of trapped carbon dioxide released by the vergin soils that are cumming up-surface from these devastated hills.
We have all been taught in last 300 years after industrial revolution that growth of industrial sector is a measure of development. Consumption of energy per capita is the measure of development. Possesing more and more arsenals is a sign of strenth. We have accepted these premises and do not question them. We do not ask what will be the final outcome of this wanton "greed for golden eggs". We have industrial effluents spoiling our water sources in the name of higher production -- higher GDP. But the result is snatching away and depleting natural resources from poor whose consumption requirements were lower by those people whose "industrial sustainability" depends on accelerated consumption besides leading necessarily to wastage, which is justified in the name of value addition. To give an example just look at this picture which we have forgotten with our current life-style. The picture is that a milled cloth takes about 80 liters of water for production of 1 meter of cloth while a handspun-handloom cloth does not need water at all. This is not to say that we do not need industrial large scale production but only to suggest thatif there is another technically available alternative then allowing both to coexist may be a good developmental model which we should always be open to try.
coming back to the question of jatropha and biodiesel it has been said many time that this is a green fuel and giving subsidy for it so that a good industry grows around it is a very worthwhile proposition. Govt of India in their royal style of more and more subdivision of business and work among ministers has come to a stage where any decision on promotion of green diesel cannot be taken without several departments consenting. We have ministry of petroleum, agriculture, rural development, industry, sc and technology, environment and finance which are the necessarily involved ministries and thee is no mechanism under which they can have continuous dialogue till the whole issue is discussed threadbare and a solution is obtained. The ministry of agriculture has to decide on plantation and seed collection policies as well as support price for the seeds. Agricultural research is needed in many areas. Industrial set up is necessary for ensuring oil extraction and esterification. This further requires a proper policy for industrial incentives, tax moratorim and ensuring continuous supply chain as well as market chain. There will be issues of sales tax, octroi too. In absense of a proper market chain, there will be batch-wise production of green diesel which will be unnecessarily costlier and economically unviable. If CDM benefits are to be obtained, support of ministry of environment is also a must.
I am reminded that once a mail was received by a producer of biodiesel who had just then converted his otherwise idle machinery into an esterification plant and had produced and stored about 4000 tonnes of biodiesel. When he received a querry for a ship-full of biodiesel he claimed inability. This was an occassion for setting up a productio-cumcoordination program. For this a SPV must be created with the lead of petroleum ministry. As a first step the ministry took the lead for declaring a purchase policy but it was not sustained. The committee of ministers has not met on the issue for a long time, largely because the govt has no coordination mechanism at the level of secretaries.
From bio-diesel let us look at a slightly different picture namely the bio-fuel. Indeed before the discovery of crude oil and the invention of current electricity the human race was using bio-fuel namely wood. But we are talking of a much more efficient and cleaner use of wood as a fuel. We are talking of burning finely-cut wood pieces in low-oxygen environment and the hot gases so generated to be used alongwith diesel in a diesel engine to generate electricity which can be used at source to pump water or to provide street lighting. Depending on scale their can be many more such uses the whole idea being to use the fuel wood much more efficiently. The babool tree which is all-too wellknown is very suitable for this purpose.
All this is not to say that we do not need bulk production, or that we do not need big industries. All I am trying to impress is that unless we are going for massive decentralisation and encouraging the use of energy at the source itself, we are wasting too much as transport losses which we cannot afford any more. Hence all methods of decentralised energy production must be examined, encouraged and put in practise, so as to maintain or improve our energy-availability pattern and yet prevent the damage to environment. Today we are looking for such greener models. Jay Hind.----------------XXX-------------------------