Crawl to the Jo'burg summit

Even the final composition of the delegation is still to be cleared. PV Jayakrishnan, Secretary, Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), Rajiv Kher, Joint Secretary, MoEF, Deepa Wadhwa, Joint Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), Vijay Nambiar, India’s permanent representative to the UN and the directors of the MEA and MoEF are the likely candidates for the Indian government delegation.

Like its search for a leader, the Indian government’s agenda for the Summit also smacks of confusion. The assessment report of its implementation of Agenda 21 reads more like a listing of different development programmes rather than an honest assessment of the last ten years. A national committee, created to discuss issues in the run up to WSSD, organised seven regional meetings across India to invite inputs from civil society. This was more of a perfunctory exercise, as no such "Indian position" or a list of priorities currently exists. The country’s ‘position’ at the Summit will simply be voiced by a shortened version of the Agenda 21 assessment report.

There’s more. This so-called "position paper" will apparently highlight India’s decentralised governance and empowerment of people. It will project India as the largest decentralised democracy with more than three million local elected leaders that govern about a half-million villages. What it will not reveal is that these elected representatives are currently jobless, as the government has not yet transferred power to them.

Even as the Indian government boasts of decentralisation at Johannesburg, a move is afoot in the country to amend certain constitutional provisions and transfer less power to the local level, and further weaken the rights of villages over local resources. The National Institute of Rural Development, a government institution, recently carried out a review of Panchayati Raj (village level governing institutions) across the country and found that villages lack authority to make their own decision, because there is little political will to empower them. In a meeting with local level leaders in New Delhi in March 2002, Prime Minister Vajpayee admitted that attempts to localise governance in India have been ineffective.

Government’s reactive agenda
With no concrete proposal to bring to the table, the Indian delegation will do no more than react to what’s served up to them at WSSD, and perhaps put up a fight to maintain -- not gain -- ground on the agreements made at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. Speaking at the recent South Asian Journalists’ Workshop on Global Environmental Negotiations organised by the Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi, the environment and forest secretary PV Jayakrishnan said India has made it clear to industrialised countries that Agenda 21 is not renegotiable. He listed finance for sustainable development as a "hard core" issue for the country, saying that unless financial assistance is forthcoming from developed countries, discussions at the WSSD would remain only "talk".

Jayakrishnan also stressed the need for transfer of technology; that there should be no repackaging existing projects in Type 2 initiatives (partnerships); and that the industrialised world should set clear targets to reduce consumption of natural resources over a given period of time. Deepa Wadhwa, joint secretary with the Ministry of External Affairs, also speaking at the workshop, said that the agreement at Rio was based on two premises -- new and additional financial resources (i.e. in addition to the 0.7 per cent overseas development assistance from developed countries as decided at Rio) and the transfer of technology. However, both these have not been forthcoming at all.

Civil society left behind
For Indian civil society, the Summit has been less than inspiring. Some groups, like Mines, Mineral and People (MMP), an Indian alliance of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working on mining issues, have so little hope that they have decided to boycott the meeting. "The Summit will witness the strongest ever lobbing by mining majors to get support as environment friendly industry," MMP Convenor Ravi Pragada said. "Groups like us who oppose the current mining systems have hardly anything to fight this lobby. So we have decided to protest it by boycotting it."

Few Indian NGOs and networks of grassroots organisations will participate in the summit and fewer will organise side events. For those who will attend, the issues of poverty, and global and local democracy are top on the agenda. The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), which held meetings seven meetings across India over the last year to discuss WSSD with Indian civil society, has selected 10 journalists from South Asia to attend the summit and ensure better coverage. A 13-member team lobbying for community rights over local resources and poverty eradication will represent the Voluntary Action Network of India (VANI), a network of some 250 grassroots organisations throughout India. "Instead of our own event we will join the World Forum for Civil society for mustering support to issues relevant to India," Satish Kumar of VANI said. The Delhi-based NGO Navdanya and Diverse Women for Diversity will organise a week-long Children Earth Summit to bring out an alternative development model for the world prepared by children, and to deliberate on women and environment related issues.

Accusing the government of not involving civil society in its preparations for WSSD, Devinder Sharma, a development expert based in New Delhi, says that the Indian civil groups will have little or no role to play in highlighting national issues at the Summit. "The Summit gives an opportunity to join hands with the globe in taking up issues. But going by the current situation, we have very little to do except making a token presence," Sharma said.

Industry safely represented by government
Indian industry is the only sector of Indian civil society adequately represented by the government. The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) will send a six-member delegation consisting of representatives of four corporate houses, including two from the automobile and paper industries. This delegation plans to network with other organisations to develop a clear stand on corporate sustainability initiatives and also to get access to what KP Niyati, head of environment management division of CII, calls "resource productive technology". The delegation will attend side events mainly related to business and corporate ethics. "We will decide what to do and what to attend right during the Summit," Niyati said. The group is, however, opposed to the subsidy lobby and will push for more technology transfer from the North.