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Correspondent

21 August 2024 at 3:50:16 pm

Convenient Outrage

There is something almost Shakespearean about Elon Musk’s indignation when the world refuses to bend to his will. The richest man in the world, accustomed to treating governments as inconveniences and public discourse as his personal broadcasting channel, has discovered the virtues of sovereign prerogative. Musk’s complaint that Starlink is licensed in more than 165 countries and has spent five years complying with every requirement of the Indian government, yet remains without a licence, is...

Convenient Outrage

There is something almost Shakespearean about Elon Musk’s indignation when the world refuses to bend to his will. The richest man in the world, accustomed to treating governments as inconveniences and public discourse as his personal broadcasting channel, has discovered the virtues of sovereign prerogative. Musk’s complaint that Starlink is licensed in more than 165 countries and has spent five years complying with every requirement of the Indian government, yet remains without a licence, is a grand tutorial in selective outrage. His insinuation that Mukesh Ambani is the real boss of India smacks of theatrical petulance. The question here is why should India compromise its security requirements simply because the applicant happens to be the world’s most conspicuous billionaire? The fact is even OneWeb and Jio Satellite Communications are awaiting outstanding regulatory steps. The government has plainly said the process is being applied uniformly. In fact, Starlink has received an initial licence, but is awaiting further approvals, including security clearance, before launching commercial services in India. The security question goes far beyond the familiar contest between foreign technology and domestic business. It concerns the extraordinary power that a private individual can exercise over communications infrastructure on which governments, armed forces and entire populations may come to depend. A Reuters investigation in July last year had reported that Musk had ordered Starlink coverage switched off in parts of the country during a Ukrainian counteroffensive in September 2022. The resulting disruption had affected military communications and operations. Imagine the strategic implications for India. In a military confrontation with China, particularly along the sensitive frontier in Ladakh, communications are integral to command, coordination and operational resilience. Would India want critical military communications to depend on a network whose availability could be affected by decisions made by a private individual outside its jurisdiction? National security cannot rest on the assumption that a powerful businessman will always make decisions in accordance with another country’s strategic interests. Access to technology must be accompanied by enforceable safeguards, credible contingency arrangements and clear limits on foreign control over critical communications. The hypocrisy becomes more conspicuous when one considers Musk’s own commercial interests. Chinese electric-vehicle maker BYD sells cars across numerous international markets but faces formidable barriers in the United States, where Tesla is a major domestic competitor. Washington has imposed substantial restrictions and tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, invoking concerns about industrial competition, security and dependence on Chinese supply chains. Does Musk denounce every American restriction on Chinese technology as an assault on free enterprise? National sovereignty cannot be invoked as a sacred right in Washington and dismissed as protectionism in New Delhi. It is time Musk realizes that the free market is not a royal court, and its most successful tycoon is not entitled to dictate terms to every sovereign state.

The Biological Cost of Drought

Writer: Parashram Patil
Parashram Patil
2 days ago
4 min read

Maharashtra’s water crisis is beginning to impose a biological ceiling on the rural economy.

Discussions about drought in Maharashtra tend to be conducted in the language of quantities. How much rain fell? How far have groundwater levels declined? What will happen to yields, farm incomes and food prices?


But they miss an inconvenient variable which is the human body. Conventional economics has a habit of treating labour as an endlessly adjustable input. If the crop requires more work, farmers work longer. If water becomes scarce, they fetch it from farther away. The spreadsheet rarely records what these hours and expenses do to the person supplying them.


Novel Framework

A framework developed by me, the Non-Linear Endogenous Biological Cap (EBC) Model, argues that the physical condition of rural workers can itself become a constraint on economic output. Climate stress does not merely damage crops and soil. It depreciates the health capital on which agricultural production depends.


Analysis of a dataset covering 1,400 farmers across major agrarian zones in Maharashtra points towards an uncomfortable conclusion: food security cannot indefinitely be built on the deterioration of the people who produce the food.


Climate stress does not affect every farm in quite the same way. Its economic consequences vary with the crop, but two broad patterns emerge.


The first is thermal exhaustion. In staple and commercial-crop regions from sugarcane-growing areas around Daund to cotton belts in Dhule and vulnerable rainfed rice systems, water scarcity is accompanied by punishing heat. A farmer’s response is longer hours in the field, more physical effort to secure water and more exposure to dehydration, headaches, muscular pain and other forms of heat stress.


According to statistical estimates, a one-point rise on a 10-point body-pain scale is associated with an additional seasonal medical expense of about Rs. 2,634. Across households, the resulting health deficit can amount to roughly Rs. 29,000.


The second pathway is found in higher-value horticulture. In the grape and pomegranate belts of Nashik and Sinnar, and in areas such as Chandgad's cashew plantations, the problem is less simply one of physical heat. It is a combination of financial and chemical stress.


A valuable crop cannot easily be allowed to fail. When drought encourages pest outbreaks, pesticide applications may increase. Farmers handling chemicals in hot conditions face greater occupational exposure. At the same time, buying tanker water, maintaining drip irrigation and protecting expensive orchards require capital precisely when climate uncertainty is making returns less predictable.


The result is that the farmer spends not only money on keeping the crop alive, but money on dealing with the consequences of doing so.


The estimated seasonal health expenditure in this channel reaches about Rs. 45,000 per household. More troubling still, confidence in reinvesting in the farm can fall below 10 percent.


Non-Linear Economics

This is where economics becomes non-linear. Farm distress is often assumed to behave like a slope: as costs rise, incomes fall proportionately. But households do not necessarily behave that way. They can absorb one shock, then another, until a final expense pushes them into a different economic state.


The study identifies roughly Rs. 35,000 in seasonal medical expenditure as a critical threshold. Beyond it, health costs begin to affect decisions that have little to do with medicine.


A household facing unexpected medical bills may postpone the purchase of better seed. Irrigation maintenance is thus delayed and loans are rolled over rather than repaid.


What begins as a health shock therefore becomes an agricultural shock. This matters greatly in Maharashtra which is not a peripheral player in India’s food economy. It is a major producer of sugar, cotton, fruit and other commercial crops, while its horticultural regions are integrated into domestic and export markets.


If large numbers of farmers simultaneously reach the same biological and financial threshold during a severe drought, the consequences need not remain confined to individual farms. Lower reinvestment can mean lower future output; lower output can mean higher prices; and higher prices can feed into inflation and trade disruptions.


The farmer’s body, in other words, can become an economic variable.


This changes the way schemes such as Jalyukt Shivar Abhiyan 2.0 should be understood. Water conservation is usually presented as an engineering construct. Their less visible function is to reduce the amount of physical and financial stress imposed on the people using the water.


Decentralised water storage and groundwater recharge can reduce the need for farmers to travel farther for water and help make irrigation more reliable. A more stable moisture regime can also reduce some of the conditions that encourage pest pressure and repeated chemical intervention.


Water conservation does not automatically eliminate health risks. Nor can a watershed project guarantee farm profitability in an era of increasingly erratic weather.


It can, however, reduce the frequency with which farmers are forced to choose between protecting a crop and protecting themselves.


India has spent decades investing in irrigation, roads, storage, seeds, fertilisers and agricultural technology. It should be equally interested in preserving the biological capacity of the person who operates all of them.


As temperatures rise and rainfall becomes less predictable, the old assumption that labour can simply compensate for environmental stress is becoming increasingly implausible. There is a limit to how much longer a person can work, how much heat a body can absorb and how much debt a household can carry before production itself begins to suffer.


The ultimate purpose of climate resilience is not merely to keep fields productive. It is to ensure that the people working those fields remain healthy enough, solvent enough and confident enough to plant again.


(The writer is a member of Maharashtra Agriculture Price Commission. Views personal.)

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