No criminals in politics

March 25th I spoke at the No Criminals in Politics function organised at Prabhadevi. The general position on the subject is that people should not vote for candidates who have a criminal background and parties should not nominate candidates who have a criminal background. A criminal is defined as some one who has been charge sheeted in a police station.

The point I had to share with the audience was that in the past 30 days I have been hearing numerous tales from people I meet at the grassroots and people who have contested elections in the past about the huge amounts of money which is distributed in slum areas in the 24 hours before the election. 500 and 1000 rupee notes flow liberally with the intention of influencing the voter to vote for a particular party. And I have by now heard the names of almost every politician in the city, Page 3 or non-descript.

Now the moot point is that are there necessary and sufficient conditions for this position? Is it sufficient that only a person should not be charge sheeted himself and it is perfectly okay if his/her party distributes money for him/her to win elections? Are these stories of money flowing around baseless allegations? How do we find the truth?

I also agreed with Mr. Indur Chughani’s position that we should be saying no to parties across the country which field candidates from anywhere. Thus a Congress fielding criminals from UP should be boycotted in Mumbai also.

Waste ho!

Read with interest two posts in TOI today.

Demolition of flyover gets under way on April 3

NCP leader dumps garbage at Thane civic headquarters

One matter relating presumably only to traffic but having a significant waste aspect to itself and the other a waste matter at heart. In the case of the Thane matter its interesting how such an important issues has only political brownie scoring value.

It’s an issue which I would rate far higher than the Ram Mandir issue or the Nuclear Agreement issue but which unfortunately doesn’t catch the attention of neither the public nor the political class. And it is an issue which I intend to go strongly with to the Parliament if given a chance. Read this link

In the case of the flyover it is six years now since I met Bejoy Davis and got to know of his process of converting debris into BIS quality paver blocks. That time I was very strongly involved with mangroves conservation and debris (and waste in general) was the biggest enemy of mangroves and I was very happy that somebody had found a solution. Since then I have pursued the matter in discussions with junior and senior municipal staff and corporators but we have seen no policy support for the matter.

Has an Environmental Report been filed by the contractor about the metric tonnes of debris that will be generated? Where in Mankhurd is the waste being taken? Is it in a CRZ area? Can the waste directly be transported to a facility where it is converted into paver blocks? Questions which would be asked and answered in most developed cities which we wish to emulate.

Not just the environment, waste has economic aspects to it as well. How many thousand crores does the country spend on waste collection and can fiscal incentives, which minimise waste (and cost of collection) at source be a better option?

In the Thane case is the TMC willing to forego the pick and dump approach to giving better fiscal incentives for segregation and minimisation at source?

Till the answers come – Waste ho!!

The interconnectedness of issues

On March 19th I along with Janak Daftary of Jal Birdari and Mr. Jagdish Gandhi met MMRDA officials at the site of the retaining wall that is being built next to the Vakola Nala  mangroves – follow the picture and details below

http://mumbaimangroves.wordpress.com/2009/02/19/mmrda-destroying-mangroves/

The meeting was inconclusive but valuable all the same. As far as I am concerned the meeting the issue no longer remained one of protection of mangroves. The issue is a confluence of three important public interest areas. For far too long mangrove conservation has been considered as an issue which should be left to a few people who ‘understand’ the issue and the issue has nothing of interest for the vast majority. The following three issues should provide clarity:

1) How are decisions taken within the government about issues of public interest? The engineers present for the visit could not answer critical questions beyond a point and their only defense for the wall was that the same had been suggested by CWPRS and IIT-Bombay and they were only carrying out the execution based on the said directives. That any real public good was coming out of it was left for everyone to guess. Everybody who has no interest in mangroves but interest in governance needs to be concerned about the decision making.

2) How is the tax payers money utilised? It is a fundamental premise that funds should not be blown on projects which are unnecessary and should be instead directed towards essential infrastructure and needs. In this case Rs. 2 crores has been spent on constructing a white elephant which is of no use at all. People who cry hoarse about the amount of money Mumbai sends to the Center and how much it gets back in return should first question whether each and every existing rupee being sent in Mumbai is being used wisely or half of it is being siphoned off? Should stopping this leakage be the top priority?

3) Everybody who is interested in the illegal proliferation of slums and a control on the illegal nexus which helps them come up needs to be interested in the issue. From one end of the mangroves dumping is progressing at a slow rate. If not stopped in 5 years you will have no mangroves and in its place a ground avaiable for encrocahment and in in another decade you will have a bursting slum. Public memory being the way it is everybody would forget that this was a mangrove plot which could have been saved with a little bit of vigilance and effort.