top of page

By:

Parashram Patil

14 January 2026 at 8:49:45 pm

Crops of Conflict

As water and climate become instruments of geopolitical leverage, India has an opportunity to turn agricultural resilience into a new form of South-South diplomacy. Climate change is making an old truth harder to ignore: food security is national security. As water becomes scarcer, harvests more erratic and trade policies more protectionist, agriculture is moving from the margins of geopolitics to its centre. Nowhere is this clearer than in Africa, where fragile food systems intersect with...

Crops of Conflict

As water and climate become instruments of geopolitical leverage, India has an opportunity to turn agricultural resilience into a new form of South-South diplomacy. Climate change is making an old truth harder to ignore: food security is national security. As water becomes scarcer, harvests more erratic and trade policies more protectionist, agriculture is moving from the margins of geopolitics to its centre. Nowhere is this clearer than in Africa, where fragile food systems intersect with contested rivers, conflict and disrupted supply chains. For India, this presents not merely a humanitarian challenge but an opportunity to practise a more strategic form of food diplomacy. Clear Warning The Nile basin offers the clearest warning. Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia depend heavily on the river, directly or indirectly, for agriculture and livelihoods. Egypt obtains roughly 90-95 percent of its water from the Nile, with most of its withdrawals going to agriculture. Wheat, rice, maize and cotton are therefore inseparable from the country's water security. Sudan is similarly dependent on the Main Nile and its Blue and White Nile tributaries for crops including sorghum, wheat, cotton and sugarcane. Ethiopia, by contrast, relies much more heavily on rain-fed agriculture, but the Blue Nile remains crucial to its plans for agricultural and economic expansion. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) has transformed this already delicate equation. The Blue Nile supplies roughly 85 percent of the Nile's runoff, giving Ethiopia substantial geographical leverage upstream. Egypt and Sudan, downstream and more dependent on the river, have consequently viewed the dam through the prism of food and water security. The dispute has its roots partly in the 1959 agreement that allocated Nile waters between Egypt and Sudan, but the rise of Ethiopia as a major upstream power has altered the political balance. The stakes are enormous. A disruption to water availability is not simply an environmental problem when millions depend on irrigated agriculture. It can affect food prices, livelihoods, migration and political stability. Across the basin, the consequences potentially extend to hundreds of millions of people. The lesson is straightforward: rivers can become geopolitical infrastructure, and crops can become strategic assets. Critical Role This is where India can play a useful role. Its longstanding diplomatic, commercial and maritime links with Africa give it an established platform. Its experience in producing wheat, rice and millets, meanwhile, gives it something more tangible: the ability to contribute to food-supply resilience. Egypt, for instance, remains heavily dependent on imports and is projected to require around 13 million tonnes of wheat imports to bridge its consumption gap. Sudan’s agricultural crisis is still more acute. Conflict and climate stress have sharply reduced cereal production, leaving output well below recent historical averages. India could therefore build food diplomacy around two complementary tracks. The first is supply. Predictable grain arrangements and strategic food buffers could help vulnerable countries absorb shocks in international markets. The second is technology. India's experience with micro-irrigation, precision farming and water-use efficiency offers tools that may help African farmers produce more with less water. The Per Drop More Crop component of the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana is one example. Drip irrigation, improved canal management, seepage reduction and precision agriculture cannot resolve a dispute over the Nile, but they can reduce the amount of water required to produce a given crop. For this to become a durable strategy, however, India will need to move beyond individual projects. Bilateral agricultural agreements with African countries could be converted into longer-term trade corridors and grain-supply arrangements. Multilateral platforms, including BRICS, could provide mechanisms for greater transparency in food distribution and market stabilisation. Seed exchanges could focus on drought-tolerant millets, biofortified wheat and heat-resistant maize suited to increasingly volatile climates. Indian private enterprise could be brought into this architecture. Agritech startups and Farmer-Producer Organisations could be encouraged to enter African markets through export-linked grants, incubation programmes and risk-sharing mechanisms. EXIM Bank credit lines and export guarantees could reduce the financial risks of deploying solar cold chains, irrigation systems and agricultural technologies in politically volatile markets. Public-private partnerships could also help Indian firms adapt AI-based crop advisory systems and IoT-enabled water sensors to African soils and farming practices. The larger opportunity is strategic. India’s relationship with Africa need not be confined to trade, infrastructure or diplomatic declarations. Agriculture offers a practical form of South-South cooperation in which food, technology and water efficiency reinforce one another. (The writer is a member of Maharashtra Agriculture Price Commission. Views personal.

When Producers Made Responsible for E-Waste

Writer: Dr. Sanjay Joshi
Dr. Sanjay Joshi
13 hours ago
3 min read

If a company makes and sells an electronic product, it should also take responsibility for what happens to that product when it becomes waste.

As we have seen, electronic waste is not just about discarded phones, computers and other devices. It is also about what happens to them after they are thrown away and the environmental and health risks that can arise when they are not handled properly.


Over the years, India has introduced rules to bring some order to the way e-waste is collected, recycled and disposed of. The 2016 E-Waste Management Rules clarified producers' responsibilities and brought several other stakeholders into the system, including consumers, collection centres and recyclers. The rules also gave greater importance to Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and introduced specific targets for producers. They also required authorised recyclers to be registered.


India first introduced EPR through the 2011 E-Waste Management Rules, and later amendments have strengthened it. EPR is the backbone of India’s e-waste management system.


In simple terms, it means that producers cannot simply evade their responsibility for a product once it is sold. They are responsible for ensuring that their discarded products are properly collected, recycled, and safely disposed of.


Under the EPR system, producers have to ensure that a specified amount of the e-waste generated from their products is collected and sent to authorised recyclers for environmentally safe recycling and disposal. The basic idea is simple: if a company makes and sells an electronic product, it should also take responsibility for what happens to that product when it becomes waste.


This shifts some of the responsibility for managing e-waste from consumers and waste handlers to the companies that put electronic products into the market. In this way, EPR encourages producers to think about the entire life of a product—from its design and manufacture to its collection, recycling, and final disposal. This helps reduce waste, recover valuable materials, and move India towards a more circular economy.


But producer responsibility does not end with setting targets. Producers are also expected to make it easy for customers to return their old or discarded electronic products. For this, they can set up collection centers or take-back programmes where consumers can hand over their e-waste. Producers can also take the help of a Producer Responsibility Organisation (PRO).


A PRO is a third-party organisation that works on behalf of producers to collect e-waste, arrange for its recycling, and ensure its safe disposal. In simple terms, a PRO acts as a link between the producer and the e-waste management system.


It helps producers meet their collection and recycling responsibilities and makes the process more organised.


The 2016 E-Waste Management Rules and later amendments have also placed greater emphasis on bringing e-waste recycling into the formal and regulated system. They require e-waste to be handled by authorised recyclers and dismantlers.


To operate legally, recyclers and dismantlers must obtain the required authorisation from the State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs) or, in Union Territories, the Pollution Control Committees (PCCs).


Authorised recyclers must follow prescribed safety and environmental standards while dismantling and recycling electronic waste. This is important because, as we have already learned, e-waste can contain hazardous substances that can pollute soil, water, and air if it is mismanaged and not handled properly.


There are also reporting and record-keeping requirements. Authorised recyclers are required to keep proper records of the e-waste they receive and process and submit the necessary information and reports to the pollution control authorities.


The regulatory framework therefore aims to gradually move e-waste recycling away from unsafe and unregulated practices and towards a formal, organised system.


By promoting authorised and formal recycling facilities, the government aims to make e-waste recycling safer, more environmentally responsible and better regulated.


Will continue next week. Till then, have a great weekend!


(The writer is an environmentalist. Views personal.)

Comments

bottom of page