Editorial 1 : When the clouds gather
Introduction
With heavy rains submerging large parts of Delhi and NCR cities - the question that inevitably arises is: Why are Indian cities never prepared for the monsoon?
The unglamorous reason – Drainage System
- Ancient and medieval civilisations had their ways of channelling water – the hydrological acumen of the Indus Valley cities is well-known.
- But in modern times, when the ground is all concrete and tarmac — not the best sponges – city planners rarely take cues from the past, that’s only romanticised politically.
- The runoff has scarcely any outlet. It accumulates in low-lying areas, inundating roads, underpasses, houses, offices, railway tracks, basements.
- The waste from urban underbellies, outside the sewerage network, finds its way to the stormwater drainage system and clogs it.
- It is increasingly becoming evident that urban India cannot deal with short but intense spells of rainfall, one of the hallmarks of climate change.
Facet of Climate Change: Hyper-local torrential rainfall
- On July 26, Delhi’s ridge area reported 99 mm of rainfall. A day later, Pusa recorded 58 mm. The IMD classifies 64 mm as heavy rainfall. Delhi’s nearly 50-year-old drainage system, by all accounts, cannot handle even 50 mm.
- Cases of electrocution deaths are being reported in parts of NCR including Gurugram.
Town Planning – Past to Present
- Most of the past cities that make up Delhi were situated on an elevated plane, which allowed them to flush out water.
- Town planning in the Lutyens and post-Lutyens eras has followed a radial or block pattern.
- Urban expansion and infrastructure creation have rarely followed the natural contours and inclines of the city. Natural contours and inclines often change every few kilometres, which provides an outlet to the run-off.
- The neglect of hydrology has pushed cities with vastly different geological features like Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru etc. towards similar water-related predicaments.
A Project called Mumbai
- Created by flattening hills and reclaimed lands from the sea, Mumbai a project that began in colonial times has continued after Independence.
- Being a mixture of low-lying areas and hills, Mumbai’s climate vulnerabilities have been underlined by several studies.
- When it rains, the water collects in the city’s central depression. During the monsoons, at least one day, virtually the entire city goes underwater, its lifeline, the railway system stops. The high tides complicate matters.
- Increasingly, after the disastrous floods of 2005, the city’s trysts with bad-weather days are becoming longer.
Social cost of Climate Change
- Climate change affects everyone. But, the brunt of floods, heat waves, and extreme cold is borne by the poor and the lower-middle classes.
- Infrastructure development in urban India has not done justice to these sections. Master plans rarely factor in informal settlements, including slums and dwellings of communities that build cities.
- The recent tragedies in Delhi show the failure of planners and policymakers to make other connections as well.
Destruction of Natural Water-flushing Systems
- In pre-modern Delhi, rivulets and small streams once carried fresh water from the Aravallis, and during the monsoons they became stormwater outlets, swiftly draining Delhi dry within a few hours of heavy rainfall.
- Presently they are either built upon or are ganda nallahs. E.g. Jarhallia Nallah in Karol Bagh.
- While the natural water-flushing systems have been debilitated and destroyed, the modern drainage mechanisms have become victims of neglect.
Conclusion and way forward
- Behind India’s monsoon woes lie poor civic maintenance, ageing infrastructure and the failure of policymakers to make essential connections between urban planning and climate change.
- Planners need to join the dots between drainage system, hydrology, climate change-induced weather vagaries, and the relentless pull of cities as centres of upward mobility and their inequities.
Editorial 2 : Landmark, benchmark
Introduction
The Supreme Court has finally removed a long-standing legal obstacle to fine-tuning the existing policies of social justice.
The Judgement: State of Punjab v Davinder Singh (2024)
- The point of contention was the correct interpretation of Article 341 of the Constitution that empowers the President to notify the list of castes to be deemed as Scheduled Castes throughout the country.
- The court has allowed state governments to sub-divide the reservation quota meant for Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST).
- The Court has also opened the door for identification and exclusion of the “creamy layer” in the SC and ST categories from the benefits of affirmative action.
- The decision of the court has firmly prioritised substance over form and held that the state governments are competent to sub-classify the Scheduled Castes in order to identify groups that merit more beneficial treatment.
- It appreciates the import of distributive justice within the extremely heterogeneous Scheduled Castes.
- It affirms that equal protection of the law is not a rule that forbids both “the beggar and the king” from begging in the streets.
Significance of the Judgement
- The judgement is a step forward in the long history of India’s rich jurisprudence on reservation.
- It would help fine-tune and deepen policies and politics of social justice in an era where the very idea of affirmative action faces an onslaught.
- The case marks the conclusion of a 20-year-long legal struggle by state governments to liberate themselves from the limits upon their power to sub-classify Scheduled Castes.
- The court has demonstrated sensitivity towards the most disadvantaged sections within the Scheduled Castes and charts the course for resolving their historic grievances.
- The judgment consolidates and reinforces the socio-legal consensus on the necessity of a principled caste-conscious affirmative action regime that was established in the Indra Sawhney judgment of 1992.
- It thus enriches the struggle for a broader, more effective and fairer, affirmative-action regime.
E V Chinnaiah Case (2004)
- A five-member bench of the Supreme Court had outlawed any policy that sought to sub-divide this category for purposes of creating sub-quotas.
- The bench unanimously took an ultra-technical view of Article 341 and held that all the Scheduled Castes, across the diverse social geographies within the states, were a homogenous class that could not be sub-divided.
- The judgement suffered from a basic disconnect with social reality.
- It failed to acknowledge that categories like Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe are very large baskets that contain social groups of different status, based on different traditional occupations and, therefore, varying degrees of disadvantage.
- Historically, they had very uneven exposure to modern education and were therefore unequally placed to take advantage of policies of affirmative action.
- Example: Arunthathiyars are about 16% of the SC population in Tamil Nadu, yet their presence among SC government employees is just about 0.5%.
Creamy Layer within the Scheduled Castes
- So far, the policy of excluding the privileged sections (“creamy layer” in the language of the Indra Sawhney judgment) within the reserved category was applicable to the OBC, but not to the SC or ST category.
- Justice B R Gavai held that the ground reality of the disparities within the beneficiary groups are too pronounced to be ignored. He writes, treating the child of a bureaucrat and a manual labour alike, even if both belong to the SC community, would defeat the constitutional mandate.
- Justice Vikram Nath clarifies, the criteria for identification of “creamy layer” would have to be different from that used in the case of OBCs.
Consequences
- A landmark judgment like this is bound to be disputed both in legal and political circles.
- Legally it can be seen as the thin end of the wedge that may lead to dilution of the affirmative-action regime.
- Politically it may be seen as aiding the current regime’s designs to divide Dalits.
- Such readings ignore the ground reality of internal differences and discrimination accompanied by political resentment among the most disadvantaged Dalit communities.
Conclusion
The recent judgement affirms the long-standing requirement of evidence-based policies of social justice. Those committed to the policies and politics of social justice should welcome this judgment and demand careful evidence-based identification of the most disadvantaged communities and provisions to ensure that the sub-division and the creamy layer do not become a route to divert SC/ST quota seats to non-reserved categories.