Singapore
Raising the bar
Jul 17th 2008
From The Economist print edition
A rare slip-up in court by Singapore’s elder statesman, Lee Kuan Yew
MEMBERS of Singapore’s government are notorious sticklers for legal exactitude. So it has been interesting to watch the reaction after the country’s elder statesman, Lee Kuan Yew—a British-trained lawyer before he became a politician—gave inaccurate testimony in the trial of two opposition leaders.
In May Mr Lee testified in a hearing to decide damages against Chee Soon Juan, the leader of the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), and his sister, Chee Siok Chin, for defaming the former prime minister and his son, Lee Hsien Loong, who is now prime minister himself. Mr Lee senior claimed that after the London-based International Bar Association (IBA) held its annual conference in Singapore last October, its president sent a letter to the Law Society of Singapore praising the country’s justice system. It has since emerged that there was no such laudatory letter.
Mr Chee (who along with his sister was briefly jailed for contempt for accusing the judge in his case of bias) tried unsuccessfully to have the hearing reconvened in the light of Mr Lee’s incorrect testimony. Mr Lee’s counsel, Davinder Singh, wrote to the court on July 9th admitting that his client was wrong about the letter but noting that the IBA’s president, Fernando Pombo, had praised Singapore’s “outstanding judiciary” in a speech at the start of the conference. Mr Singh argues that what matters is that the IBA did praise Singaporean justice, not whether it did so in a speech or a letter. Mr Chee says there is a difference: the speech was made before the conference, where criticisms of the justice system were aired. Mr Lee was claiming, in effect, that the IBA was still impressed after this.
By coincidence, on July 9th the IBA’s Human Rights Institute issued a report criticising the use of defamation suits by the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) to silence the opposition and the press, and expressing concerns about the independence and impartiality of Singapore’s judges. The law ministry has rejected the IBA’s report, pointing out that Singapore’s legal system has won excellent ratings in other international surveys. Indeed, in cases not involving the country’s leaders, there is no dispute about its quality. As for the IBA’s worries about cases involving PAP figures, the law ministry claims that the IBA failed to substantiate its “grave” allegations with evidence, though its report does discuss several worrying cases.
America’s State Department, which is in rather less danger of being sued by the PAP than are the opposition or newspapers, has expressed concern about judicial independence in political cases in Singapore. In its latest human-rights report, in March, the department noted that the PAP’s consistent success in defamation suits against critics “led to a perception that the judiciary reflected the views of the ruling party in politically sensitive cases.”
According to the Straits Times newspaper, Mr Lee on July 11th accused human-rights organisations of “a conspiracy to do us in”. He said that they saw that Russia and China had been studying Singapore’s success, and hence regarded it as a threat. Mr Lee and the government argue that doing things their way has made Singapore prosperous, orderly and corruption-free, and has earned international respect. The threat of defamation proceedings may make opposition politicians weigh their words more carefully than they do elsewhere. But Singaporean voters continue to buy the PAP’s argument that such constraints are a price worth paying—so far.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Disgusting!
India and pollution
Up to their necks in it
Jul 17th 2008 | VARANASI
From The Economist print edition
Despite good laws and even better intentions, India causes as much pollution as any rapidly industrialising poor country
Getty Images
A HEREDITARY Hindu priest, Veer Bhadra Mishra is wont, shortly after sunrise, to totter down the stone steps of his temple to the Ganges river, and there perform a three-part ritual. He touches the sacred water. He dips himself in it. He cups it in his hands and drinks it.
Mr Mishra, 70, cannot make it down to the river every day. The steps are steep. And the river-level at Varanasi, Hinduism’s holiest city, where Mr Mishra is the eighth-generation custodian of a temple dedicated to the monkey-god Hanuman, has fallen. Diversion of the river-water, for industry, agriculture and dozens of upstream cities, is the cause of this. So, to save Mr Mishra’s creaking knees, his acolytes sometimes bring him a morning cup of Ganges water—a cloudy brown soup of excrement and industrial effluent—to relish.
Mr Mishra has contracted typhoid, polio, jaundice and other water-borne ailments. A hydrologist turned environmental activist, he reasonably assumes that his morning devotions are to blame. By official standards, water containing more than 500 faecal coliform bacteria per 100 millilitres is considered unsafe for bathing. As it passes Mr Mishra’s temple, at the upstream end of Varanasi’s 6.5km (4 mile) stretch of terraced riverbank, or ghats, the Ganges contains 60,000 bacteria per ml.
Downstream of the ghats, where 60,000 devotees perform daily ablutions in the river and 32 streams of raw sewage empty into it, the figure rises to 1.5m. Two cremation grounds along the ghats, which dispose, wholly or partly, of 30,000 corpses a year, do not help. (Over 3,000 corpses were reported bobbing in the river last year.) In places, the Ganges becomes septic: tar-black, stinking, without life. Mr Mishra fears that Hinduism, which reveres the Ganges as “the source of life”, will suffer for this. But the corporeal effects of foul water in India may be easier to measure.
By official estimates, India has facilities to treat 18% of the 33,200m litres of sewage its cities produce every day. In fact, it treats only 13%, because of shortages of power, water and technical expertise in its sewage plants. These figures may underestimate the problem: measuring the output of 700m Indians who have no access to a toilet is tricky. But it is enough to suggest why most Indian rivers, from which millions of Indians draw their water, are horribly polluted. Unsurprisingly, then, despite much progress in related areas, such as availability of safe drinking-water, an estimated 1,000 Indian children die of diarrhoeal sickness every day. In the words of Sunita Narain, a prominent environmentalist, mocking the tourist ministry’s slogan: “Incredible India, drowning in its excreta”.
As India rapidly industrialises, this invites a troubling thought. By 2020, according to the World Bank, India’s water, air, soil and forest resources will be under more human pressure than those of any other country. Undaunted, India plans to sustain its current high rate of economic growth without the environmental devastation that Western countries, and recently China, have wrought. Its democratic traditions, it is often said, including a free press, independent judiciary and vigorous social activism, will help prevent the damage. So should its voters: according to a survey last year by the Pew Research Centre, 79% of Indians considered pollution a “very big problem”. And yet, if India cannot begin to deal with its own excrement, how will it cope with more complicated, and politically contested, hazards?
After all, its rivers are noxious despite many excellent environmental laws and regulations. Nor is a lack of money the main problem. Since 1985, and the launch of an emergency plan to save the Ganges, India has dedicated 51 billion rupees ($1.2 billion) to cleaning its rivers, mostly by urging state governments to build sewage-treatment plants beside them. The Ganges and one of its main tributaries, the Yamuna, which runs through Delhi, were allotted over half of this cash. But less than half has been spent. And the sanitation it has built would be hopelessly insufficient even if properly used, which it is not.
In Varanasi, the state government of Uttar Pradesh (UP) has built three treatment plants with a total capacity of around 100m litres of sewage a day. But Varanasi produced 150m litres when they were built, and may now produce twice this amount. Moreover, the plants rarely operate at full capacity. During frequent power cuts, the sewage flows untreated into the Ganges. During rainy seasons—around five months of each year—the river floods the plants’ sump wells, with the same effect.
At least there is hope, in the shape of the activist priest, Mr Mishra. For over a decade, he has been engaged in a legal dispute with UP’s government over how to fix the problem. The government wants to build more of Varanasi’s current expensive and unsuccessful treatment plants. Mr Mishra, with support from the municipal government, wants a cheaper sort, designed by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, which relies on gravity and naturally occurring bacteria and uses almost no power. On June 30th the ministry of environment, in Delhi, requested UP’s rulers to abandon their plan in favour of testing Mr Mishra’s.
Occasional victories by dogged activists, backed by the courts, are justly celebrated in India. A successful campaign in 2001 by Ms Narain’s organisation to convert Delhi’s buses and taxis from diesel to gas, and thereby reduce air pollution in the capital, was a cheering example. But these are exceptional cases amid a pervasive institutional weakness. Clueless local governments; corrupt state governments; feuding, overburdened central government: all three have played a part in the Ganges foul-up. To achieve relatively clean economic growth India will have to overcome these frailties, even as its capacity to pollute soars. Against such forces, the efforts of environmentalists to affect policies with powerful backers seem puny, and their triumphs short-lived. Alas, with 1,000 extra vehicles on its roads every day, Delhi’s air is now filthier than ever.
Up to their necks in it
Jul 17th 2008 | VARANASI
From The Economist print edition
Despite good laws and even better intentions, India causes as much pollution as any rapidly industrialising poor country
Getty Images
A HEREDITARY Hindu priest, Veer Bhadra Mishra is wont, shortly after sunrise, to totter down the stone steps of his temple to the Ganges river, and there perform a three-part ritual. He touches the sacred water. He dips himself in it. He cups it in his hands and drinks it.
Mr Mishra, 70, cannot make it down to the river every day. The steps are steep. And the river-level at Varanasi, Hinduism’s holiest city, where Mr Mishra is the eighth-generation custodian of a temple dedicated to the monkey-god Hanuman, has fallen. Diversion of the river-water, for industry, agriculture and dozens of upstream cities, is the cause of this. So, to save Mr Mishra’s creaking knees, his acolytes sometimes bring him a morning cup of Ganges water—a cloudy brown soup of excrement and industrial effluent—to relish.
Mr Mishra has contracted typhoid, polio, jaundice and other water-borne ailments. A hydrologist turned environmental activist, he reasonably assumes that his morning devotions are to blame. By official standards, water containing more than 500 faecal coliform bacteria per 100 millilitres is considered unsafe for bathing. As it passes Mr Mishra’s temple, at the upstream end of Varanasi’s 6.5km (4 mile) stretch of terraced riverbank, or ghats, the Ganges contains 60,000 bacteria per ml.
Downstream of the ghats, where 60,000 devotees perform daily ablutions in the river and 32 streams of raw sewage empty into it, the figure rises to 1.5m. Two cremation grounds along the ghats, which dispose, wholly or partly, of 30,000 corpses a year, do not help. (Over 3,000 corpses were reported bobbing in the river last year.) In places, the Ganges becomes septic: tar-black, stinking, without life. Mr Mishra fears that Hinduism, which reveres the Ganges as “the source of life”, will suffer for this. But the corporeal effects of foul water in India may be easier to measure.
By official estimates, India has facilities to treat 18% of the 33,200m litres of sewage its cities produce every day. In fact, it treats only 13%, because of shortages of power, water and technical expertise in its sewage plants. These figures may underestimate the problem: measuring the output of 700m Indians who have no access to a toilet is tricky. But it is enough to suggest why most Indian rivers, from which millions of Indians draw their water, are horribly polluted. Unsurprisingly, then, despite much progress in related areas, such as availability of safe drinking-water, an estimated 1,000 Indian children die of diarrhoeal sickness every day. In the words of Sunita Narain, a prominent environmentalist, mocking the tourist ministry’s slogan: “Incredible India, drowning in its excreta”.
As India rapidly industrialises, this invites a troubling thought. By 2020, according to the World Bank, India’s water, air, soil and forest resources will be under more human pressure than those of any other country. Undaunted, India plans to sustain its current high rate of economic growth without the environmental devastation that Western countries, and recently China, have wrought. Its democratic traditions, it is often said, including a free press, independent judiciary and vigorous social activism, will help prevent the damage. So should its voters: according to a survey last year by the Pew Research Centre, 79% of Indians considered pollution a “very big problem”. And yet, if India cannot begin to deal with its own excrement, how will it cope with more complicated, and politically contested, hazards?
After all, its rivers are noxious despite many excellent environmental laws and regulations. Nor is a lack of money the main problem. Since 1985, and the launch of an emergency plan to save the Ganges, India has dedicated 51 billion rupees ($1.2 billion) to cleaning its rivers, mostly by urging state governments to build sewage-treatment plants beside them. The Ganges and one of its main tributaries, the Yamuna, which runs through Delhi, were allotted over half of this cash. But less than half has been spent. And the sanitation it has built would be hopelessly insufficient even if properly used, which it is not.
In Varanasi, the state government of Uttar Pradesh (UP) has built three treatment plants with a total capacity of around 100m litres of sewage a day. But Varanasi produced 150m litres when they were built, and may now produce twice this amount. Moreover, the plants rarely operate at full capacity. During frequent power cuts, the sewage flows untreated into the Ganges. During rainy seasons—around five months of each year—the river floods the plants’ sump wells, with the same effect.
At least there is hope, in the shape of the activist priest, Mr Mishra. For over a decade, he has been engaged in a legal dispute with UP’s government over how to fix the problem. The government wants to build more of Varanasi’s current expensive and unsuccessful treatment plants. Mr Mishra, with support from the municipal government, wants a cheaper sort, designed by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, which relies on gravity and naturally occurring bacteria and uses almost no power. On June 30th the ministry of environment, in Delhi, requested UP’s rulers to abandon their plan in favour of testing Mr Mishra’s.
Occasional victories by dogged activists, backed by the courts, are justly celebrated in India. A successful campaign in 2001 by Ms Narain’s organisation to convert Delhi’s buses and taxis from diesel to gas, and thereby reduce air pollution in the capital, was a cheering example. But these are exceptional cases amid a pervasive institutional weakness. Clueless local governments; corrupt state governments; feuding, overburdened central government: all three have played a part in the Ganges foul-up. To achieve relatively clean economic growth India will have to overcome these frailties, even as its capacity to pollute soars. Against such forces, the efforts of environmentalists to affect policies with powerful backers seem puny, and their triumphs short-lived. Alas, with 1,000 extra vehicles on its roads every day, Delhi’s air is now filthier than ever.
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