BSE-Greenex, the 25th dynamic index on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), is being unveiled.

On Wednesday, BSE-Greenex, the 25th dynamic index on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), is being unveiled. Besides the BSE, Greenex will be run by gTrade Carbon Ex Ratings Services Private Limited (gTrade; http://www.g-trade.in), the structure involving Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad researchers, think-tank Observor Research Foundation, and private investors.

by Rohit Bansal, Daily Pioneer
Please find here the link to the original article.
Please find here the entire media package of the launch of g-trade: g-trade media package

Does India Inc need to be told its ‘carbon performance’ based on quantitative, performance-based criteria? “Yes,” is the simple answer. An economy of our size and aspiration needs to green flag by way of an inclusive market-based mechanism. If I may go a step further, large business entities in India need to offer themselves for deeper probing, way beyond mandatory disclosures. A new index is merely a way to harmonise and discipline.

Green ethos is a tool of soft diplomacy. It interests global industries, investors and Governments. That said, moving beyond tokenism, printing an annual report of recycled paper being the cliche, makes real green flagging a pain that those who sit on the BSE100 must bear. I did some checks on whether Greenex is treading on territory already covered by global indices. It is not (links** to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, the S&P Environment, Social and Governance Index and the FTSE4Good Index are flagged below). Its basis, as per gTrade chairman Samir Saran, a London School of Economics alum, is publicly-disclosed energy and financial data, not subjective parameters. With this, Saran aims to promote sustainable investing in India. His is a multi-pronged approach of increasing investor awareness, advocating progressive regulatory reform, and targeting energy intensive industrial sectors. “gTrade seeks ethical investments in green technologies and follows a first of its kind business model, and aims to launch ethical financial products in the carbon markets,” he says.

With an interest in nine sectors, pharma and biotech, steel, cement and cement products, fertilisers and agri chemicals, textiles, financial services, utilities, machinery, and oil and gas, is gTrade is aiming to compare energy guzzlers within, say, cement or steel, as also inter se with, say, financial services. Here trust evoked by IIM-A may be crucial. Sector-specific proprietary algorithms must sensibly compare energy efficiency performance of various companies/sectors.

gTrade will employ index constituent weight capping. Index constituent weights will be capped at 6 per cent during dynamic rebalancing, in an effort to increase the diversification within the index and ensure greater compliance with international regulatory and statutory investment guidelines.

Greenex’s nirvana lies in providing a tool for use by “green” retail and institutional investors to track the performance of India’s largest and most liquid, energy efficient stocks. Also, license beyond familiar territory and help in the development of green financial products including mutual funds, ETFs and structured products.

How the “winners” are incentivised might determine the success of green flagging. I include here, how the “losers” are punished. Social media activists must watch this space. You, not just gTrade, drive social expectation. Your questions will keep India Inc mindful of their social contract, in the instant case with green flagging.

BRICS, Columns/Op-Eds

Article in “Russia and India Report”: Navigating the trust deficit

by Samir Saran and Jaibal Naduvath
February 17th, 2012

Please find here the original article

At the 17^th round of the Indo-Russian Inter-governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Technological, Scientific and Cultural Cooperation (IRIGC-TEC) held in November last year, the two governments agreed to set up an investment fund with public-private partnership to finance projects in the two countries. Barely a month later, after almost 18 years of negotiations, Russia was formally invited to join the World Trade Organization (WTO), and, has until June of this year to ratify the accession agreement. Beyond reducing tariff barriers and eliminating non-tariff barriers, accession to WTO is also expected to reduce government interference in business, a key pre-condition for free enterprise. Russia’s evolving economy has been witness and victim to continued government interventions.

Nevertheless, given the impending WTO accession, the India-Russia joint investment fund has managed to get its timing right. Current India-Russia bilateral trade, estimated at around USD 9 billion, is admittedly far below its potential. Trade promotion initiatives such as this investment fund, a possible Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) with the Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan Customs Union combined with the business confidence the WTO accession would inspire, is expected to double bilateral trade to USD 20 billion by 2015, an ambitious, though very achievable feat. With a Price to Earning (P/E) ratio of 6, compared to India’s 14, China’s 15 and Brazil’s 8.5, Russia’s market is attractively priced amongst the emerging markets with traditional industries such as oil and gas, metals and minerals remaining hugely undervalued.

Despite warm bilateral ties, and close political engagement and co-operation extending well over 55 years, India-Russia trade has rarely managed to go beyond the legacy confines of defense equipment, space, energy, metals and minerals, and, commodities, even while, ironically, both countries have independently managed to very successfully leverage new vistas of opportunity in economies they stood together against for a better part of the 20^th century. Russia-European Union (EU) trade in 2010, for instance, stood at around USD 191 billion, with the bloc accounting for over 47% of Russia’s total trade turnover, representing a three-fold increase in just ten years. On the other hand, India-EU trade has grown to USD 107 billion this year and is expected to double in two years on the back of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) currently being negotiated. Compared to this, India-Russia bilateral trade of around USD 9 billion today pales in significance even though it represents a quantum leap from about USD 3 billion in 2006-07.

Russia-India two-way trade and investment has rarely ventured beyond government-controlled domains, which are also accompanied with government-backed guarantees of some kind. Russia’s active participation in several military, aerospace and nuclear projects in India and Indian investment in Russia’s energy sector and preferred trade in controlled commodities are part of this broader trend. But, the true test of any meaningful business relationship lies in the unmitigated ability of private enterprise on either side to confidently engage, invest and gain from each other’s economies, outside the security of sovereign assurance, even if notional. This is not so in the case of Indo-Russian trade.

Russia, of course, dominates the Indian defense sector and is comfortable navigating through Indian officialdom, which still retains much of its controlled economy character from the 70s and 80s. However, this may not remain the case for long. Under greater media scrutiny and public glare, the defense relationship will need to become far more efficient in terms of reliability, time lines and price points, else Russian dominance in the sector could be potentially challenged. Further, as the offset policy starts playing out and thereafter as the Indian private sector becomes engaged in defense production and R&D, Russia may no longer be a competitive player in this segment. To really be a beneficiary of India’s transformation over the coming 2 decades, Russia needs to expand its portfolio by diversifying into the arenas of industry and infrastructure in India. In doing so, its ability to confront India’s dynamic and loud democracy, and an increasingly uncompromising civil society will be as severely tested as its ability to navigate the country’s highly regulated business terrain arising from complex land use norms, environment clearances, and fiscal regimes, all of which have shown to evolve over time.

On the other hand, Russia offers India minerals and land, besides a huge market for software, services, value added goods and consumables. The resource sector in Russia, though, continues to be dominated and overwhelmed by its government with significant self-interest. Agriculture and land based activities too would be prone to similar dynamics and one can expect Indian private sector’s trepidations to be strong on investing in either. Apart from large Public Sector Companies and select large Indian Multi National Corporations, it is unlikely that Indian private sector will invest in Russia, despite undervaluation and potential for attractive return. Indian businesses’ traditional risk aversion is demonstrated by flight of capital to low return economies of the Atlantic that have corresponding low risk political ecosystems as well.

When Indian businesses consider making investments in Russia, they still seem daunted by perceptions constructed by imagery of the powerful and manipulative oligarchy, political nepotism and uncertainty, and seemingly poor judicial and legal recourse frameworks. Fears to do business in Russia have been hyped by experiences of companies such as ExxonMobil, Total and Shell in Russian Oil Sector, which were divested of their interests by Russian political class in a manner that was viewed as ad-hoc, if not vindictive. This imagination has often resulted in investments by Indian entrepreneurs being channeled into markets such as UK, EU and US, which are far more taut than Russia in terms of economic opportunity.

Ironically, Russian investors feel the same way towards India, drawing from a regular narrative of chaotic democracy, policy inconsistency, political fickleness, and civil instability with commitment cycles perceived to not exceed the life of the dispensation in power. One of the collaterals of the 2G verdict of the Supreme Court, which saw the revocation of 21 of Sistema Shyam Telecom’s (SSTL) 22 telecommunications licenses, could be the flickering and faint Russian Interest in Indian business opportunity. Russia’s USD 28 billion telecom to tourism conglomerate, Sistema JSFC, operating in India through its subsidiary MTS, had invested USD $2.5 billion over the past three years into the project, in arguably, the largest private sector intervention by a Russian company in India’s new economy to date. Further, Russian state owned Federal Agency for State Property Management acquired a 17.4% stake in SSTL by investing a hefty $600 million just last year. Fortunately, there is a growing business constituency, which views such re-calibrations as an inevitable part of polity evolution, but nonetheless the experience of Sistema, which may see itself as a victim of judicial overreach as some argue, could well define Russia’s appetite for India’s growth story.

Russia’s accession to WTO this summer and the consequent abolishment of tariff and non-tariff barriers will heighten global interest in Russia. Pro-investment initiatives such as the proposed joint public–private investment fund combined with demonstrable political and economic will on both sides should result in heightened interest in private enterprise on both sides to explore and invest in each other. Multi-billion dollar National Minerals Development Corporation – Severstal Joint Venture steel project in Odisha or Indian companies negotiating long-term agreements for supply of diamonds from Russia are positive signs for medium to long term economic engagement between the two countries.

BRICS, Columns/Op-Eds

Article in “The Hindu”: Giving BRICS a non-western vision.

by Samir Saran and Vivan Sharan
New Delhi, February 14, 2012

Please find here the link to the original article.

India is all set to host the Fourth BRICS Summit in March this year. The journey from Yekaterinburg to New Delhi has demonstrated that the political will amongst member nations to sustain this contemporary multilateral process is strong. Along the way South Africa has been welcomed into the original “group of four.” Yet, the challenge for BRICS has always been, and continues to be, the articulation of a common vision. After all, the member nations are at different stages of political and socio-economic development. While some have evolved economically and militarily they are yet to succeed in enabling plural governance structures, while others who represent modern democratic societies are being challenged domestically by inequalities and faultlines created by caste, colour, religion and history. The BRICS nations do have a historic opportunity — post the global financial crisis and the recent upheavals in various parts of the world — to create or rebuild a new sustainable and relevant multilateral platform, one that seeks to serve the interests of the emerging world as well as manage the great shift from the west to the east.

Way forward

Indeed, two out of the five economies in BRICS, China and Russia, have already emerged, and are veritable heavyweights in any relevant global political and economic discourse. Why then should BRICS depend on sluggish multilateral channels such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), or try to imbibe didactic, non-pragmatic western perspectives on issues purely of common interest? It is amusing to be offered solutions to poverty and inequality, bottom of the pyramid health models, low cost housing options, education delivery, energy and water provision, et al by the wise men from organisations and institutions of the Atlantic countries. When was the last time they experienced poverty of this scale, had energy deficiency at this level and suffered from health challenges that are as enormous? The responses to the challenges faced by the developing world reside in solutions that have been fashioned organically.

BRICS could systematically create frameworks offering policy and development options for the emerging and developing world and assume the role of a veritable policy think tank for such nations, very similar to the role played by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in the 20th-century world. Thus BRICS must create its own research and policy secretariat (for want of a better term) for addressing specific issues such as trade and market reforms, urbanisation challenges, regional crises responses, universal healthcare, food security and sustainable development (many of these issues are being discussed year at the BRICS Academic Forum in March).

Non-traditional security

The OECD’s stated mission is to “promote policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world.” Although the BRICS nations account for a fourth of global GDP and represent over 40 per cent of the total global population, none of them are OECD members as yet; instead what they have is “enhanced engagement” with the OECD. The BRICS nations have already created a viable platform for “enhanced engagement” with each other through the institutionalisation of the annual Leader’s summit, preceded by an Academic Forum of BRICS research institutions and a Financial Forum of development banks (and this year, a newly instituted Economic Research Group will focus on specific economic issues). The dominant discourses within each of the BRICS nations today are centred on non-traditional security, which can be efficiently addressed through collective market based response mechanisms.

Despite intra-BRICS trade volumes rising exponentially over the past decade, there are few instances of actual financial integration within the consortium (aside from the case of Russia and China starting bilateral currency trading last year). A useful first step to enable this would be to institute a code of liberalisation of capital movements across the five countries, as a modern day parallel to the 1961 OECD code with an equivalent mandate. In the current environment of global economic uncertainty, multinational corporations are perhaps the most adaptable and profitable drivers of economic growth. Therefore, at the outset, the creation of favourable policies for multinationals to conduct business across BRICS would be well justified. Moreover, just as the OECD has a comprehensive set of guidelines that set benchmarks for various economic activities, from testing standards for agricultural goods to corporate governance of state owned enterprises, the BRICS nations could create their own guidelines on the best practices and standards within the consortium.

Finally, within the BRICS nations, there are both import and export centric economies. This provides an excellent template for a realistic multilateral negotiating platform where obdurate self serving bargaining positions are natural starting points. The stalled discussions at the Doha Round of the WTO are an example of the difficulties of consensus building. Since the BRICS nations are already addressing a plethora of issues covered by the Doha Round, they are well placed to move ahead of it, and resolve mutual positions and common concerns.

What started as an investment pitch by Goldman Sachs (BRIC) has evolved into a useful multilateral instrument, for the BRICS nations. BRICS must now move on from being a grouping of individual nations, discussing agendas, to becoming a “go-to” institution for setting regional and global agendas. The essence and ethos of such an institution must in turn, flow from the inorganic prism of stability, security and growth for all. Stability from business cycles and financial governance failures, security from traditional and non-traditional threats posed to humans and the environment, and unbiased growth and prosperity are common aspirations for all BRICS nations, and they must be achieved and delivered from within. The Fourth BRICS Academic Forum will attempt to address these imperatives.

Samir Saran is Vice-President and Vivan Sharan an Associate Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation. The foundation is the Indian coordinator for the Fourth BRICS Academic Forum on March 5-6, in New Delhi.

Books / Papers, Water / Climate

ORF Report “Re-imagining the Indus”

Please find here the link http://orfonline.org/cms/export/orfonline/documents/other/indus.PDF to our comprehensive report on the “Indus”, the associated treaty, the emergent rhetoric and the reality of people whose lives are inseparable from the river and their traditional and contemporary water management practices.

It is perhaps the most comprehensive effort that captures essential narratives and historical evidence from both sides of the border, that is unable to divide the organic and indivisible river basin.

Co-produced with the LUMS, Lahore with the support of the DFID, this research led by ORF scholar Lydia Powell is certain to offer a pragmatic insight on the debate and the way ahead for the two countries and more importantly for the one people of the river Indus.

I had the pleasure of writing one section of this report.

BRICS, Columns/Op-Eds

Column in The Economic Times: “India will be watching Putin’s new team.”

In the News

Samir Saran featured in “The National”

India PM under pressure to resign as court withdraws telecoms licences

Eric Randolph, Feb 3, 2012

Please find here the link to the original article.

NEW DELHI // The Supreme Court’s decision to scrap 122 mobile phone licences, which it says were illegally awarded by the telecoms ministry, is another blow to the beleaguered Indian government. In its judgement yesterday, the court ruled that telecoms officials had “virtually gifted away” the licences to preferred companies, costing the public billions of rupees in lost revenue. The verdict places the blame squarely on former telecoms minister Andimuthu Raja, saying he arbitrarily fiddled the application process to favour certain companies, including real estate firms that had no prior experience in the telecoms business, and quickly sold on their allotted spectrum for huge profits. The court criticised the decision in 2001 to “arbitrarily” fix prices at that year’s levels – a decision that cost the exchequer US$36 billion (Dh132.2bn), according to an audit by the Central Bureau of Investigation in 2010.

Mr Raja was arrested and charged with corruption last year along with several officials and corporate executives, and a separate trial will determine whether any bribes were paid to fix the process. A separate petition, seeking to investigate the role of the home minister, P Chidambaram, who was the finance minister at the time, was sent back to a lower court. It has two weeks to take a decision.

The Congress-led government has tried to shift the blame on to the previous National Democratic Alliance (NDA) administration, saying it set the rules for spectrum allocation in 2003. “The policy was initiated by the NDA government,” said Kapil Sibal, the current telecoms minister, at a press conference yesterday. “The prime minister was in no way responsible, nor was the finance minister.” But the opposition says this ignores the charge that the policy was illegally subverted by Mr Raja. It says the government of prime minister Manmohan Singh must have been aware of the fraud going on at the telecoms ministry.

“The entire policy of the government and its implementation has been held to be illegal and completely fraudulent,” Arun Jaitley, the parliamentary leader of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, told reporters yesterday. “For the government to say it has not been indicted shows a sense of shamelessness.” There is likely to be political fallout for the government, which has spent the last two years mired in scandals and unable to pass a single major economic reform.

“The opposition will use this verdict to demand the resignation of Chidambaram and the prime minister and it will be almost impossible to pass a single bill in the next session of parliament – perhaps even the budget,” said Samir Saran, the vice-president of the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi-based think tank. Much may depend on the results of state elections being held across five states, including Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, which begins polling next week. The results, to be announced on March 6, would give an indication of how much the recent scandals have influenced voters outside the capital. “The government will try to buy time and pin its hopes on a favourable performance in the provinces,” said Mr Saran. “If they get that, they won’t need to be so apologetic. “They will see it as a chance to turn a fresh page, perhaps induct new faces into cabinet and draw a line under all this mess.”

A major reshuffle of the cabinet could even touch the prime minister. Though he is renowned for his personal probity, he has faced mounting criticism for his ineffectual leadership and failure to tackle corruption in his government. “He has lost his credibility with everyone,” said Ashok Malik, a well-known political columnist based in Delhi. “A wiser person would have resigned by now.” Some feel that yesterday’s verdict may at least reassure the international community that there are limits to India’s graft-ridden politics. Over the years, the Supreme Court has consistently shown itself to be a bulwark against the worst excesses of officials.

Subramaniam Swamy, one of the petitioners in the case and leader of the Janata Party, said the verdict went beyond his expectations. “It will have a very good impact for the future – it says that if you commit a crime, you cannot make a fait accompli of it,” he told reporters outside the court. But others fear it only confirms the view that India is plagued by corruption. “India’s reputation as a place of crony capitalists and opaque bureaucracy has been strengthened today,” said Mr Malik. For Anil Bairwal, the director of the Association for Democratic Reform in New Delhi, the test will be how the government responds. “The Supreme Court has consistently passed these types of judgements,” he said. “What has been wis that the politicians – and indeed the entire political class – don’t pay attention.”

foreign.desk@thenational.ae

Books / Papers, Water / Climate

Carbon markets and low-carbon investment in emerging economies: A synthesis of parallel workshops in Brazil and India

Abstract

While policy experiments targeted at energy and innovation transitions have not been deployed consistently across all countries, market mechanisms such as carbon pricing have been tested over the past decade in disparate development contexts, and therefore provide some opportunities for analysis. This brief communication reports on two parallel workshops recently held in Sao Paulo, Brazil and New Delhi, India to address questions of how well these carbon pricing policies have worked in affecting corporate decisions to invest in low-carbon technology. Convening practitioners and scholars from multiple countries, the workshops elicited participants’ perspectives on business investment decisions under international carbon markets in emerging economies across multiple energy-intensive sectors. We review the resulting perspectives on low-carbon policies and present guidance on a research agenda that could clarify how international and national policies could help encourage both energy transitions and energy innovations in emerging economies.

Read the entire article here: Full article (PDF-version).

Columns/Op-Eds, Politics / Globalisation

Article in Financial Express: Identity and Access in Uttar Pradesh

by Samir Saran and Vivan Sharan
January 30th, 2012
Please find here the original article

Uttar Pradesh (UP) is home to a population similar in size to Brazil and is spread out over a vast area, ranging from the fertile Gangetic Plains to the arid Vindhya Hills. It has traditionally also been the state that shaped national politics and the caste, class and religion based political landscape is representative of the complexities of democracy in India. It is also today a state that defines the challenges that lie ahead in the coming decade and more. Be it physical or social infrastructure, employment or environment, industry or agriculture, multiple narratives within the state need to be reconciled. However, the causal relationship of caste with opportunity continues to be most vexed. There are significant divergences in access to the basic necessities – water, electricity and modern cooking fuel (two out of Mayawati’s election rally cry trio of ‘bijli, sadak and paani’) across this geography. Once rich in economic growth potential, driven by the gains achieved by the agriculture sector through the Green Revolution, the state is now the primary contributor (21.3%) to the overall poverty in the country as per the Multi Dimensional Poverty Index of the UNDP with close to 70 percent poor households.

Over the years, the state has seen increasing political emphasis and rhetoric directed at the marginalized social groups that exist within the state, as a strategic ploy to secure voting constituencies. This specifically includes people categorised as Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) who represent majority proportions in relation to the total population of the state (Figure 1). It is ironic then, that the average income of SCs and OBCs in UP, is over 18 percent and 20 percent lower respectively, than the all India average, according to the latest NSS data compiled at the India Data Labs at the Observer Research Foundation.

India DataLabs @ ORF: NSSO Consumption Expenditure 2009/10

In terms of access to drinking water (within dwelling) the SCs are the worst off amongst the 3 groups, followed by the OBCs. The Central, Eastern and Southern regions (the NSS divides the State into 5 regions found in Figure 1) fare poorly; a combined average of around 35% of SCs and OBCs have access within their dwellings in these regions, compared to close to 60% in the relatively prosperous Northern Upper Ganga Plains. This average diminishes to an appalling 14 percent in the Central, Eastern and Southern regions if only SCs are considered.

Inherent barriers to social and economic mobility have compounded the inequities created by lack of basic infrastructure provision, and political apathy towards development in the state. These worrying realities are exacerbated by the fact, that there has been negative growth in access to electricity (an average of -15.23%), over the five year period 2004-05 till 2009-10, in the Central region and negligible growth in Eastern region, amongst all of the aforementioned social groups (Figure 2). This negative growth is primarily driven by the sharp decline of access in urban areas. A nearly 22% decline over the 5 year period, in access to electricity in the case of OBCs living in urban areas located in the Central region, is instructive of the fact that despite representing the largest political constituency in the region, they have been unable to secure commensurate development entitlement.

India DataLabs @ ORF: NSSO Consumption Expenditure 2004/05 & 2009/10

A recent World Bank Report on “The Role of Liquefied Petroleum Gas in Reducing Energy Poverty” suggests that everything else being equal, a higher level of LPG access is positively correlated with higher education levels in households in developing countries such as India. Unfortunately, there are large inequities in access to the modern cooking fuel across social groups (Figure 3). While affordability is a key concern, and according to the report, high costs are the most important determinant preventing consumption shifts across households; from less efficient primary sources of cooking fuels such as firewood, there are few justifications that help resolve facts such as – OBC urban households in the Central region have shown a 30 percent decrease in access to LPG over 2004-05 to 2009-10 (while access has remained nearly stagnant in rural areas).

India DataLabs @ ORF: NSSO Consumption Expenditure 2009/10

Indeed income class has a bearing on the levels of access to drinking water, electricity and LPG, and this is particularly true in developing societies, where lack of access reinforces income groups and in turn sharpens particularities of social groups. Low income poverty traps are dominant since the poor have no means to improve existence, owing to mediocre infrastructure, poor education and skills attained, lack of health services and poor productivity levels perpetuated by inequitable access to these essentials. The overall lack of access to specific social groups across regions, as visible in the case of UP, only adds to the sustained and absolute poverty levels of the state.

The higher levels of development seen in the Northern and Southern Gangetic Plains, serves to highlight that, successive governments have been unable to leverage the agricultural productivity of the region and enhance basic infrastructure throughout the state. The logical conclusion is then, that the bulk of the development in the state has resulted from proximity to water and fertile soil and the development of industry, rather than policy or administrative interventions, affirmative action or otherwise. Over the past decade, in the aggressive battle for votes, political parties have emphasised an inclusive development agenda and rallied support through promises for social mobility across castes and classes. The statistics while telling a part of the tale do suggest such promises to be mere rhetoric. Even in regions where some groups have telling political weight, ‘Bijli’ and ‘Paani’ eludes them. This is certainly a dangerous’sadak’ for the most populous state of the country, to keep treading on.

*Samir Saran is Sr. Fellow & Vice President and Vivan Sharan is Associate Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.

Books / Papers, Water / Climate

Re-imagining the Indus: Mapping Media Reportage in India and Pakistan

Published 2012, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi

Overview
Water shortage has become a subject of intense public debate in the present political narrative on resource management and riparian rights. In an attempt to discern the divergence on core issues and mainstream media reporting, Re-imagining the Indus is a methodological study based on Media Content Analysis of the reporting on water issues related to the Indus, in the leading dailies of both India and Pakistan. This monograph seeks to capture the existing discourse and stimulate policy dialogue on the subject.

In Detail
What is the general discourse on water scarcity and related crises in the Indian and Pakistani media? The study conducted by Samir Saran (ORF) and Hans Rasmussen Theting, scrutinised the media coverage on water on three specific themes – the political discourse, water governance and people, practice and environment.

Titled ‘Reimagining the INDUS: Mapping media reportage in India and Pakistan’, the study found that the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) does not dominate the reportage in Pakistan, indicating a low level of discontentment or critique.

It also found that it is only in the months of winter, when the water flow is low, that inter-country dispute between India and Pakistan, and significant negative sentiment against India, gets attention in Pakistan. But in the Indian media, Pakistan only appears during spring months.

The study, now published in the form of a book, found that agricultural concerns and inter-provincial disputes dominate media reportage in Pakistan while in India media lays greater emphasis on urban water concerns and interventions, including ground water and domestic consumption.

The study also showed that media reports in both the countries, Pakistan more than India, recognise the need for the two countries to cooperate on water issues. From the study, it was also clear that in both India and Pakistan, there is equal emphasis on the aspects of water governance and infrastructure.

Water shortage has become a subject of intense public debate in the present political narrative on resource management and riparian rights. In an attempt to discern the divergence on core issues and mainstream media reporting, Re-imagining the Indus is a methodological study based on Media Content Analysis of the reporting on water issues related to the Indus, in the leading dailies of both India and Pakistan. This monograph seeks to capture the existing discourse and stimulate policy dialogue on the subject.

Read here – https://www.orfonline.org/research/re-imagining-the-indus-mapping-media-reportage-in-india-and-pakistan/

Books, Media, Research, Writing

Re-imagining the Indus: Mapping Media Reportage in India and Pakistan