The year 2005 AD has been unfortunate generally for the whole international community and particularly for South Asian Subcontinent. First we had the huge tidal waves called Tsunami triggered by an underwater earthquake near Indonesia. Next there was a massive deluge in whole of Gujrat at the onset of the monsoon. Then there were cloudbursts followed by torrential downpour first over Mumbai and next over Andhra Pradesh. The downpour is recurring over Gujrat and Mumbai. Simultaneously whole of Bihar, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh are in grip of varying degree of drought. This has resulted in a huge life and property loss. Are these heaven sent calamities? Definitely not.

Our Agriculture and associated activities still contribute 30% of Gross National Product but our Agricultural Sector remains heavily under-financed and under-invested both at private level as well as governmental level. Our rural assets are still worth $ 300 billion whereas our Industrial and our service sector assets are worth $ 100 billion. Still the lion share of new investments is going in Industrial and Tertiary sector. The investment in the Primary sector is so meager that it is not even enough for the maintenance of the existing agricultural assets and what to say of creating new assets in the country side. This is after 10 Five-Year Plans in our Socialistic Nehruvian Planned Economy.

There is a huge accumulated surplus in the rural area as reflected in the household saving by World Bank Data. Bihar is topping in whole of India in rural as well as urban house hold saving still there is the largest outflux of migrant labourers from Bihar to other states of India. This clearly shows that because of lack of basic infrastructure such as road and power , there is a huge capital flight from Bihar to other states in general and particularly from the rural area to the urban area within Bihar.

landowners who are primarily responsible for the serious , illegal tree logging. The same landowners were also responsible for consciously sabotaging the Nation Wide Afforestation Program launched by the Forest Departments in different states. The Forest Department had given the incentive of planting logwoods in private plots at Governmental Cost. The planted logwoods would remain the private property of the plot owners. Such a scheme had been formulated so that most of the bare , agricultural lands of low yield may be brought under tree cover. But just the contrary occurred. Instead of increased tree cover there was decreased tree cover. The big and medium landowners got their orchards logged at very remunerative price and brought these orchard areas under Government Log Wood Scheme. Thus net tree cover area remained the same and subsequently an epidemic spread which destroyed all the logwoods and it was never replanted. Thus in the long run tree cover has drastically decreased.

Therefore there should be a strong legislation from the Government for compelling the big and medium landowners for carrying out afforestation program over 40% of their land holding at their cost. This will include the planting of tree belts which will prevent soil erosion due to strong westerly and easterly winds.

This is just one facet of the problem. The other facet of the problem is the government funds for Integrated Rural Devlopment. We have 540 Members of Parliament plus in the thirty Indian States and five Union Territories we have 300 members of legislative assembly and legislative council in each state on an average. The MP’s have Rs 2 crores per annum and MLA’s & MLC’s have Rs 1 crore earmarked for their respective Land Area Development. Apart from this we have Jawahar Rozgar Yojna, Indira Awas Yojana and Food for Work program and many new ones are coming up with every new Government. If all these funds were utilized conscientiously and judiciously then there would be no dearth of employment nor there would have been lack of fund for Primary Capital Formation.

Whatever rural assets, we had, have been wantonly or through sheer neglect destroyed over the years. One most important sector where rural assets have been destroyed out of sheer greed is the forest and orchards.

India has total land area of 300 million hectares out of which 140 million hectares are arable land. This means rest is forest cover, mountains and deserts. So at least there should have been 40% forest cover but LANSAT imagery shows that we have only 11% and less forest cover.

This leads to serious global warming as well as erosion of soil. Global warming leads to serious disruption of South-Westerly Monsoon Winds and soil erosion leads to lack of retention power of moisture by soil resulting in recurring floods.

The first and foremost point in Long Term Disaster Management should be to launch a concerted program of massive afforestation primarily by private efforts because it is the big and medium

Apart from this there should be a strong legislation for MP’s, MLA’s and MLC’s whereby they are compelled to utilize their Land Area Development Funds. If they default on this by a certain margin say by 50% then they should be debarred from standing for any public post. These two legislations will go a long way in correcting the ecological imbalance as well as infrastructural imbalance. Once these imbalances are corrected, primary capital will be repaired and maintained, new primary capital formation will take place and conditions will be created for overall economic development and for increased employment opportunities.

This in my opinion is the only long term remedy for the recurrent cycle of drought and deluge.

Contributor: Dr. B. K. Sharma is lecturer in Electronics and Communication Engg, NIT, Patna. Dr. Sharma’s academic profile includes a B. Tech from IIT, Kharagpur, M. Tech from Stanford University, USA and PhD from University of Maryland, USA. He has more than 30 years experience of teaching and research in the field of Electronics.