Saugata Roy speaks on Sustainable Development Goals

Saugata Roy speaks on Sustainable Development Goals

Posted on March 30, 2017 | by admin2 | Leave a Comment

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Madam we are discussing on a Motion under 193 brought by Anurag Thakur on Sustainable Development Goals health and welfare for all. Before I begin, I must thank the honorable Speaker that she has been perusing this issue of Sustainable Development Goals with persistence. Not only in Delhi, she had a Commonwealth Women MPs’ meeting at Jaipur in August 2016, where this was highlighted. Then again in Indore she had an Asian Speakers’ Summit this year where she highlighted the Sustainable Development Goals. So, here through the intervention of the Speaker we have made progress.

Madam, you know this issue of Sustainable Development Goal came up during the Presidency of Gro Harlem Brundtland, the Norwegian Prime Minister who provided the definition of Sustainable Development that was used for the next 25 years. This was in 1925.

This intergenerational concept of Sustainable Development was adopted at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development at Rio in 1992. The definition of Sustainable Development has evolved to capture a more holistic approach linking the three dimensions of sustainable development, economic development, social inclusion and environmental sustainability (as per vision of Sustainable Development was emphasised at 2012 Rio+20 Conference).

Madam, I need not go into the details of what are the 17 goals of Sustainable Development. They are – no poverty, zero hunger, good health and well-being, quality education, gender equality, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, decent work in economic growth, industry and infrastructure, etc.

You will notice that all these 17 goals are interlinked. For instance good health and well being is linked to clean water and sanitation. Even gender equality is linked to this; unless women get equal attention in health matters, how will maternal health improve? And all this is linked again to economic growth.

So, the point is to have a holistic view, on the whole matter and that is why it is necessary to discuss the goals at length. Let us see about how progress has been made in this matter. In child health, throughout the world 17,000 fewer children die each day than in 1990 but more than 6 million children die before their fifth birthday every year. Maternal mortality has fallen by almost 50 percent since 1990 but in Eastern Asia, North Africa and Southern Asia maternal mortality has declined by about two thirds. But proportion of mothers who do not survive child birth compared to those who do is still fourteen times higher in underdeveloped regions than in developed regions.

One only half of women, we are talking about gender equality, only half of women in developing regions receive the recommended amount health care. Lastly, maternity maternal mortality rate – MMR – from 437 per lakh live births in 1991 came down to 167 in 2009. In 2009, 72 percent deliveries were institutional so there has been a big progress.

The next the big challenge towards health is HIV AIDS. By 2014,there were 13.6 million people accessing antiretroviral therapy, an increase from 8 lakh in 2003. India has made significant tide in reducing the prevalence of HIV and AIDS across various highest categories. Adult prevalence has come down from 0.45 percent to 0.27 percent in 2011. We have made progress in bringing down the number of those affected by HIV AIDS. Madam, the newer HIV infections in 2013 were estimated at 2.1 million which was 38 percent lower than in 2001. So newer cases are also coming down with antiretroviral therapy and at the end of 2013, two lakh forty thousand children in India were infected with HIV through their parents.

Having said that, let us judge, what are the big goals for 2030 for India?

By 2030, for India and the World.
By 2030, reduce Global Maternal Mortality Rate to less than 70 per lakh childbirth.
By 2030, end preventable deaths of newborn children under five years of age.
By 2030, end the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and neglected tropical diseases and combat hepatitis, water-borne diseases etc.
By 2030, reduce one-third premature mortalities from non communicable diseases.
By 2030, strengthen the prevention and treatment of substance abuse including narcotic drug abuse and alcohol.
By 2030, that is upto which our Sustainable Development Goal is, ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health care service, including for family planning information and education.
By 2030, achieve universal health coverage including financial risk process protection.
By 2030, strengthen the implementation of World Health Organisation Framework Convention on tobacco control in all countries,
By 2030, support the research & development of vaccines and medicines for the communicable and noncommunicable diseases,
By 2030, substantially increase health financing. Send then the capacity of all countries in particular developing countries for early warning, risk reduction and management of national and global health risks.

Madam, I have more or less tabulated, formulated the big problems today.

Health care is not about doctors only. I know Madam, you are a reputed pediatrician yourself, and a dedicated person who still does a lot of pro-bono work for poor children; we admire you for that. But, as has been stated earlier, doctors are considered demi-gods by the patients and their relatives. But, they do not act as demi-gods.

In India, as specially in my State of West Bengal, 90% of the people are still dependent on government hospitals and public health care. The big hospitals and nursing homes have all come up in big cities, and they are money-minting machines. They are not giving people treatment; they are sucking money out of the system. Madam, you know that in West Bengal the situation became so bad; there were several attacks on hospitals after patients died and huge bills were imposed on them. Our West Bengal Government enacted a Clinical Establishment Act in which there is a proposal to set up a commission to go into the bills raised by the hospitals.

I think it is very essential for the Government that some control be brought on them. Madam, I feel there should be some standard practices prescribed – in which condition what investigations can be done, whether a patient should be sent into ventilator or ICU, and a standard protocol should be devised to control them. Madam, you know in this House we have discussed how the Government should control the price of stents, which, when costing Rs 40,000, the amount charged is Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 2 lakh. The Government has taken some steps to control that.

You know about the price of drugs: because of WTO regulations, the prices of drugs have gone up very much. We are paying the price for patented foreign drugs, which are abnormally costly. The Government has a drug price control order. I want it to be implemented strictly so that prices of drugs, especially those manufactured by multinationals, are suitably brought down. There has been an effort by the Government to bring down drug prices and I appreciate that.

Madam, you are from West Bengal and are aware of the efforts West Bengal Government has done in the field of medical treatment. More than 100 fair price medicine shops have been opened in West Bengal, where generic medicines are being distributed with up to 70% discount. Madam, you also know that in West Bengal, in the government hospitals all treatment including cardiac surgeries.

Here in this house, while perusing sustainable development goals, let me condemn all attacks on doctors anywhere. Doctors are human beings. I do not believe that any doctor will let a patient die willingly. In Bengal also whenever such attacks have happened, our Chief Minister has taken the strongest possible action. We are ready to pull up doctors. We are ready to punish doctors through the legal means not by these types of attacks.

Madam, your father, Dr Gopal Das Nag, was also a high class GP; we are forgetting the concept of GP or the family doctor. Madam, nowadays there are only specialistsor super specialists. There are no family doctors who advise a person on his health status. I think we need such people.

There is a saying ‘prevention is better than cure’. It is necessary to educate people on health habits. When I was in the Ministry of Urban Development, we started a competition called the hand-washing competition; it is just one simple thing to make people aware about washing hands before eating to prevent many diseases. Although I have differences with the ruling party but I like the initiative taken by them regarding Swach Bharat Abhiyaan as It prevents open defecation. This is one of the main sources of preventing diseases and I would always like to advise everyone that we must pursue clean habits.

I would like to bring to your notice that 65% of women in India suffer from anaemia, why doesn’t the government arrange to give them iron tablets free of cost. We have recently passed the Mental Healthcare Bill. We need people with healthy body and mind. Let this be our sustainable development goal. Make the hospital approachable and do not make the hospital a butcher house where poor patients and their families are murdered. Let us march towards a diseases free, physically and mentally healthy India. With these words, I would like thank you for giving me the time to speak.

Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar speaks during a short duration discussion on sustainable development goals

Posted on August 3, 2016 | by admin2 | Leave a Comment

Thank you Hon’ble Sir for giving me the opportunity to speak on this very important topic that is plaguing the world today. I stand here as a member of All India Trinamool Congress. We are actually standing at crossroads today whether to be a developing nation or not.

Certain nations have been developing at a faster pace than ours over the last centuries and they have also been major contributors towards the green gas emission. Their carbon footprint has also been much more than ours. When we take up the task of development, load of sanctions and interjections are being placed before us and we as a developing nation are facing this problem now.

So as my Hon’ble Chief Minister Smt Mamata Banerjee has rightly pointed out that with perspective to India the NGT has to be prudent in their restriction towards our development projects and refrain from overzealous actions.

I take this opportune moment to extend gratitude to the leaders of 193 countries who during the General Assembly Session of the United Nations in September, 2015 got together and took serious cognizance of this burning issue to strike a balance between growth and development of the nations and also to maintain nature environment to protect our planet.

Five things are involved in this total effort – people, planet, peace, prosperity and partnership between nations. The sustainable development goals were worked upon on the millennium development goals, eight of them were there, and we have done quite well.

And depending on that we have worked upon the SDGs which also involves the environment. MDGs did not take into cognizance the environmental factor but here we want to maintain the environment like all of us who are born from one mother, we have only one world. And to leave this world for our posterity we must protect the world.

Even if we are trying to develop in different fields we have to take care of our planet, of our nature, of our water bodies, and the SDGs have taken into consideration. This is the first time that all the nations first got together, discussed and then formulated the seventeen goals and 169 targets, that we are going to undertake over the next 14 years up to 2030 to meet our needs.

It is already coming to effect from first of January this year. And unlike many previous decisions the world together in consultation has drawn this up. It was not due to any regional decision, It was not due to any national decision, it was rather a quantitative decision dealing not only with human or the planet separately. Ecological sustainability was seen as an element of economic development.

The problems were taken to be universal and interconnected because the air quality getting disturbed over my country will go and affect another country. But in doing so we also have to take into consideration that we are growing, we are developing and we must be given more opportunity. The first six goals for MBG which were for poverty allegation, has been repeated here also. We the developing world need industrialization but we have to be protective towards mother earth.

On behalf of the people we serve we have adopted a historic decision on a comprehensive, far-reaching and people-centric set of universal and transformative goals. We are committed in achieving sustainable development in these three dimensions of economics social and environmental development to build upon the MDGs. But most important would be policy making.

When we are discussing it here today, budget allocation should be made towards meeting these 17 goals and 169 targets and we have to strike a balance. The developed world has been a major contributor towards polluting our water bodies, our air quality, depleting our forest, starting the practice of newer food techniques and we have followed suit and have forgotten our traditional foods.

Yesterday Hon’ble speaker had organized a meeting regarding SDGs, and there an honorable member was pointing out the present situation in which the current generation does not even recognize traditional foods like jawar and bajra for nutrition; we are dependent on packed foods. We are preparing them, packing and then marketing them; this involves artificial methods and energy consumption which is not good for the planet, we have to go back to our natural resources.

Six of the 17 goals here involves disaster risk reduction, recognizing the reduction of vulnerability of exposing the poor to diseases is important for sustainable poverty reduction. Out of the 17, the first one is poverty eradication. Poverty and environment are closely relates, especially when people depend for the primary source of livelihood on the environment.

Restoring natural systems and improving natural resource management practices at the grassroots level are essential to the strategy to eliminate poverty. Diversion of common and marginal lands to a more economically viable so to say useful purposes deprives the poor off a resource base which has traditionally met many of their sustenance needs, like the right of the forest should be with the people who live in the forest since ages are known. We should give them the power to live in the forest, to use the forest as their own to the adivasis and tribals who have been living there instead of cutting the trees and giving away the wealth of the forest, giving away the mines and minerals of the forests to multinationals.

Market factors also lead to the elimination of the crops that have traditionally been available to the diet of the poor. Here I would like to point out that these days baby food and prepared food is taking a serious toll on the health of the children. If the babies are breastfed, they are saved, they are protected from reproductory tract diseases, they are protected from diarrheal diseases. It is known that according to a very important study in the medical journal of Lancet breastfeeding can save 820000 lives annually preventing 13% of deaths of children under 5. Breastfeeding could reduce one third of the respiratory diseases, for India it could reduce 156000 child deaths each year. It would reduce maternal deaths of cancer, breastfeeding forms a natural contraceptive towards maintaining family size and it would also help prevent the lady from getting breast cancer or that of the reproductive tract; 4300 crores improved as far as the IQ of the child is concerned for a child who is breastfed. Not only that, the proprietary preparations that are marketed by different companies at the moment, they sell milk formulas at the moment which emit 111226 tonnes of greenhouse gasses. So many countries are encouraging mothers towards breastfeeding.

The United Nations is laying stress on infant and young children’s feed. There are reports that many children who have feed fed on formula milk remain stunted in growth, in chronic hunger and their IQ is not optimally developed. Not only that, due to greenhouse emissions during preparation, it generates carbon footprints. The industrially manufactured milk formula adds greenhouse gases at every step of production, transport and use, and it gives rise to wastage also.

One of the sustainable development goals, the second one, is regarding the food that developed nations throw away; but the under-developed nations go hungry. There are many people in the under-developed nations, to be specific, one in every nine children, who go to bed hungry. But every day, the food wasted in developed nations is 4,896 crore kilograms. These food materials, which are used as landfills, gives rise to methane gas, which again causes global warming. And this food wastage is at its highest in the United States where, about 80% of the people who are throwing away the food say that they feel guilty while throwing the food on their plates but that they cannot help it.

I think, while we are discussing the SDGs, we are here to draw policies, how we can work towards attaining the SDGs. The policy should be to not to throw away food. We should actually make it a stylish slogan in the society. There should be a slogan, ‘Grow more food, don’t throw food.’

Each one of us should try to grow a little bit of what we eat. I can proudly say that I don’t buy vegetables for my family, I grow it myself. Everybody might not be having land to grow enough for the whole family but every balcony, every rooftop can house earthenware pots where not only you grow your vegetables in little amounts but where you can actually make manure or compost from everyday household waste like vegetable peels and wasted food matter. It can be just turned into compost and used as manure. So the slogan should be ‘Grow food, don’t throw food.’

And not only for India – it should be globally accepted; everyone must grow a little bit to contribute to the nation, to the international community, to the planet. And we have to take into consideration that a major thrust at the policy level is necessary to ensure equity and justice for us.

Then the next SDG is education. I am proud to say that my leader, Mamata Banerjee, the Honourable Chief Minister of West Bengal, started Kanyashree in which she has allotted Rs 1,500 crore, not a paltry Rs 100 crore, and 32 lakh girl children are being empowered. And she is giving them non-polluting vehicles in the form of cycles to paddle to school, because this paddling of cycles is not only allowing the girl to go safely to the school and come back, but the very effort of paddling the cycle is creating a proper cardiac output by which she will never get hypertension, she will never get diabetic, she will never have a heart attack, when she grows up. So this is the foresight of my leader, Mamata Banerjee. I think we should all accept and adopt these methods to create a sustainable development because a cycle is a non-polluting vehicle.

With perspective to India, 15% of homes are lit by kerosene. As far as industry is concerned, we are using fossil fuel. As far as production of electricity is concerned, we are using fossil fuel. And even for the lighting up of our homes, we are using kerosene. It is a polluting agent. It is disturbing the atmosphere. So we have to shift towards renewable and clean energy. But my personal experience is, I have allocated a lot of money from the Members of Parliament Local Area Development (MPLAD) fund towards street lighting through solar power, but after two to three years there is no after-sales service. There is nobody to take care of the batteries. So once they stop working, there is no way by which we can take them forward.

The present Government has started the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Yojana in which vocational training is being given to young children, young dropouts. I would request the Government to train these young students to maintain the sources of renewable energy, the equipments of renewable energy and non-polluting equipments, so that they become a good workforce and maintain these renewable energy equipments for use for a very long time.

With the increase in purchasing power, wasteful consumption linked to market-driven consumerism is stressing the resource base of developing countries. So that we should go back to a traditional way of living in the fashion of our father of the nation’s teachings, for simple living.

We have to realize whether this is technology push or market pull that the nations today are responding to, the new generation is responding to. If it is only the technology push then dialogue through policy making would have to be started with the multinational who are forcing our youth to follow paths which are forcing them to buy equipment which are polluting.

Out of these different SDG goals agriculture is very important because it involves land use and water use. We should make available water for agriculture even to the remotest villages. We should start practicing multi-crop culture and have a proper land use policy. And depletion of land should be taken care of by scientists who can ensure nitrogen fixation by alternating crops with leguminous crops; this will not only will bring down the price of Dal as it is now but the legume will also stabilize the nitrogen of the soil.

The biomass which will continue for a long time to be a major source of fuel energy especially for rural poor, you are not actually being able to help them. Biomass will form their major source. But there are two kinds of biomass usage for combustion. The cow dung cake is polluting and it is also increasing in price at the moment. But the Gobar Gas is not; that should be made universally available to the rural poor.

The significance of the diversity in nature must be realized, must be appreciated and taught in schools because we need to protect and preserve our Earth. There is a strong relationship between health and the state of environment and employment. Because, the workers of asbestos, silicon and mines get silicosis. They are dying of lung diseases. So we have to give them a proper healthy atmosphere to work and earn living.

The overseas assistance is declining and the commitments industrialized countries gave in the Earth Summit a decade ago are mostly unmade. We have to turn our attention towards that. Environmental and social clauses which have been made implicitly or explicitly part of international agreement, must not be used selectively to erect trade barriers against us. We have to take this up at international forum. Mechanism must be put in place to make latest technology available to developing countries at reasonable cost. And mainstream education should include science and children should be taught basic science so that they know about the future. If they do not preserve this earth they have no home.

Thank you, Sir.