25th July 2010

Amit Sen Gupta

LAST month saw the release of the India Country report for 2010, regarding progress made till date towards achieving specific targets in eight different areas, set by the United Nations in 2001 – known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDG targets are supposed to be achieved by 2015. While official pronouncements were an occasion to indulge in self congratulatory claims, a closer look at the real progress made, paints an entirely different picture. We examine here the claims being made and the reality as regards Goal 6 of the MDGs, titled: “Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases”.

HIV-AIDS: NO ROOM FOR COMPLACENCY

The 2010 India country report on MDGs states that: “However, the spread of HIV/AIDS in the country shows a downward trend: from 2.73 million (0.45 per cent) people living with HIV/AIDS in 2002, the number has declined to 2.31 million (0.34 per cent) by 2007. The prevalence rate of HIV infection in the country also seems to have stabilised over the last few years”. These figures are, at best, an educated guess based on surveillance data generated by the National Aids Control Organisation (NACO). We may recollect that in 2007 the estimate of HIV positive cases in India was drastically reduced from 5.7 million cases (as estimated then by UNAIDS) to less than 3 million. This reduction was not a consequence of any remarkable public health effort but because it was felt that earlier estimates were based on faulty data. The crux of the problem lies in the fact that data on HIV is estimated from that generated by surveillance centres, numbering just a few thousand. This again is a function of the moribund public health system in India, which is not geared to serve as medium of surveillance and treatment. The National Aids Control Organisation (NACO) has, as a consequence, built up a parallel structure that intersects very little with the government health system. In addition to the obvious problem of duplication of efforts, this means that data available on HIV in India has a narrow base and cannot be relied upon entirely.

The table below provides comparison with other countries in a similar situation (low and middle income countries where the HIV epidemic is characterised as “concentrated,” i.e. limited largely to specific ‘high risk’ groups) regarding availability of HIV testing and counseling services. In India one such centre is available per 1,30,000 population of people over 15 years of age. India continues to lag behind most countries in a similar situation, in spite of recent efforts to scale up the availability of counseling and testing centres.

Table: Facilities with HIV Testing and Counseling Services

Source: Towards Universal Access: Progress Report 2009, World Health Organisation

There has been significant scaling up of antiretroviral treatment (ART) availability but it still lags significantly behind requirement. The following table from NACO’s annual report for 2010 gives details of ART treatment access.

Table: People on ART in India

Source: NACO, Annual Report, 2010 (Data Till January 2010)

Thus less than 50 per cent of those registered actually have been started on ART. More importantly about 33 per cent of those who started treatment have either died or not continued treatment (meaning that they are at risk of succumbing to the disease). Moreover, if we take the estimate of 23 million HIV positive cases as the baseline, we would expect that an excess of 7,00,000 patients would require to be on ART. In contrast, only about 40 per cent of them are receiving ART.

An emerging threat is the poor roll out of second line ART, i.e. treatment with newer (and more expensive drugs) for those who become resistant to the first line drugs. At present there are just 10 centres in the entire country that provide treatment with second line drugs. NACO reports that 2,750 patients have been referred for second line treatment and 970 patients are on such a regimen. This is a clear under-reporting of the requirement, and a large number of patients are being denied second line treatment because of lack of infrastructure and medicines. It is, furthermore, a problem that is likely to increase exponentially in the coming years.

To sum up, there is clearly little room for complacency. While significant progress has taken place in the last decade, India still sits on the brink of a generalised HIV epidemic. The claim that India is poised to meet its MDG targets vis a vis HIV is foolhardy and can disarm continuing efforts to scale up interventions.

MALARIA: VERY LITTLE PROGRESS

The Country Progress report of 2010 states that: “The incidence rate of Malaria and deaths due to Malaria in recent years show that while incidence of Malaria has declined … the percentage of deaths of Malaria patients has not declined”. Evidently this is not a very encouraging report! The official data indicates a marginal decrease in incidence with no significant decrease in the number of deaths. All mortality and morbidity data in India is open to being questioned, because of the poor state of the public health system, and its ability to carry out surveillance in any meaningful manner. This is particularly so in the case of malaria, where several reports and expert opinions indicate that actual incidence rates are 10 times or more higher than reported rates. Even scientists at the National Institute of Malaria research have commented on this in a paper published in 2007, stating: “It is now well accepted that the reported incidence of malaria at the national level on the basis of surveillance carried out in the primary health care system at best reflects a trend and not the true burden of malaria.”

In 1953 when a national eradication programme was launched, some 75 million malaria cases and eight lakh deaths were estimated to be occurring in India which then had a population then of about 360 million. With the eradication programme in full swing, incidence of the disease dropped rapidly. By 1965-66, there were just one lakh cases and deaths were completely eliminated. But malaria, instead of being wiped out from the country, made a comeback. After renewed efforts (in a period when the malaria eradication programme was renamed as the malaria “control” programme, reported incidence ranged between 2-3 million per year, and deaths reported were between 200 – 1,000 per year. As against this the MDG 2010 report indicates that between 2005 and 2008, the number of reported cases ranged between 15 and 18 million and reported deaths were between 10,000 to 17,000 per year. In other words, official data indicates that there has been a ten fold rise in the number of malaria cases and in the number of malaria deaths in this decade, as compared to the last decade! If we extrapolate the official data with the widespread understanding about under reporting, we are looking at 50-100 million cases in a year and 50,000 to a 100,000 deaths each year due to malaria. Even this may be an under-estimation -- a paper published in the open-access journal PLoS Medicine, put the extent of disease caused by P falciparum (which currently accounts for about half of malaria cases) in India at about 102 million cases in 2007. Clearly, we are nowhere near a situation where we can claim that the country is on its way towards meeting its MDG goal as regards malaria control.

Of particular concern is the fact that about half, and in some districts a large majority (such as the forested areas inhabited by adivasis in the states of Orissa, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh), of the cases of malaria are being caused by the most virulent strain of malaria – plasmodium falciparum. The emergence of falciparum malaria in such a large epidemic form has complicated malaria treatment, and in endemic areas conventional treatment with drugs such as chloroquine are proving to be virtually useless. Newer drugs, such as mefloquine and the artemisinin based combinations have been introduced. These are more expensive (Artemesinin is 20-30 times more expensive than chloroquine) and toxic and have made the treatment of malaria more complicated. After the introduction of Artemesinin, there are no new drugs on the horizon. There is a real threat that the widespread (and often unnecessary use of this last line drug) will lead to resistance, and the emergence of malarial super-parasites that would be immune to all available drugs.

TUBERCULOSIS: AT THE BRINK OF A RESURGENCE

Tuberculosis is a disease of poverty and poor environment. The developed world saw the eradication of TB in the 1920s (including in most countries in the entire continent of Europe) a good 15 years before the introduction of the first medicine to treat Tuberculosis. Yet about a quarter of a million people die of TB in India every year. India is clearly indicated as the Tuberculosis capital of the world – every fifth person suffering from TB in the world is an Indian.

There have been fairly impressive advances made in India in the last decade and a half, since the rollout of the Revised National TB Control Programme(RNTCP). As a consequence the number of deaths due to TB has halved, from about half a million to a quarter of a million each year. Much of this advance has taken place, not because of improved public health measures, but because of global technological advances – especially with the introduction of new ant-TB drugs that are more effective and have reduced the average duration of treatment from 18 months to just 6 months. However prevalence rates and the number of deaths due to TB remain unacceptably high.

Further, a new threat looms large. With widespread use of the new anti-TB drugs, we are witnessing the emergence of what is known as multi drug resistance TB (MDR TB). The present short course therapy is ineffective in MDR-TB and cure rates have generally been less than 60 per cent. Treating such cases can be extremely expensive – up to 10 times as expensive as with the short course therapy. A recent paper published in the Indian Journal of Tuberculosis estimates about half a million MDR-TB cases emerge every year amongst new and previously treated cases, with half being in China and India. Estimates for 2007 suggest that India has the highest burden of MDR-TB in the world, with 131,000 cases of MDR-TB. In India, MDR-TB amongst new cases is estimated at 2.8 per cent and amongst previously treated patients at 17 per cent. As long as the RNTCP does not offer easy and heavily subsidised (or free!) access to quality assured diagnostic and treatment services for MDR-TB, patients will seek unaffordable and inappropriate care in the private sector, which will result in further emergence and spread of highly resistant M/XDR-TB strains. There are thus indications that we are poised on the brink of a resurgence of a new TB epidemic unless steps are taken to remedy the situation.

GROSS NEGLECT OF PUBLIC HEALTH

The above situation needs to be seen in a context. India continues to be one of the worst performers in world as regards public provision of health services. The Indian health system is one of the most privatised in the world and government expenditure (as per cent of GDP and in real terms) one of the lowest in the world (see following table).

Per Capita Public Expenditure on Health (in ‘purchasing power parity’ US dollars)

It is no mystery, thus, why India is poised to miss out on achieving the targets set in the MDGs as regards health care. Only a sustained and incremental strengthening of the public health system can remedy the situation. Till then pronouncements of “achievements” will continue to obfuscate the real situation.

15th July 2010

D. Raghunandan

The UPA government is once again attempting to completely open up the retail sector to foreign direct investment including, possibly, 100 percent FDI in organized multi-brand retail or supermarket chains. The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion has issued a discussion paper on this subject, significantly without suggesting any upper limit on FDI. Currently, FDI is permitted up to 26 percent under the automatic route in wholesale so-called cash-and-carry operations and up to 51 percent with government approval in single-brand stores such as Nike shoes, Levi jeans or Calvin Klein readymades. These measures have been welcomed by industry, and seen by critics as the thin end of the wedge. Opening up the retail sector in India to foreign players has been a gradual process but the end-goal has always been clear, namely the unfettered entry into India of global supermarket chain stores such as Wal-Mart of the US, Carrefour of France, Marks & Spencer and Tesco of UK, Shoprite of South Africa and so on, all of whom have already established a substantial presence in India. The Indian retail market, with its burgeoning middle-class with growing purchasing power has, after the opening up of China, long been considered the last major frontier of globalized retail.

From the beginning these moves have been totally opposed by the Left and other progressive sections. Opposition has also come, albeit somewhat two-facedly, from the BJP with one eye on corporate interests and another on its major constituency of small traders who are deeply apprehensive. Arguments against have mostly centered around the potential adverse impact on the mostly unorganized small retail sector of so-called mom-and-pop stores (in India more often father-and-son stores) and the likely large-scale loss of employment in this sector. These arguments have been dismissed by proponents as being purely ideological and as going against modern trends and the opinions of experts. Arguments advanced in support of this policy by corporate houses including Indian retail chains, business associations, consultancy firms and government officials have revolved around two major propositions which, this article would show, are complete myths.

First, huge wastage in the agri-produce supply chain in India will be avoided because MNC retail giants would make the huge investments required in storage, cold-chain and transportation infrastructure and also bring in new technologies. Second, the farmer in particular would benefit from this improved efficiency and by the elimination of middle-men, the customer too ultimately benefiting through better quality produce and lower prices. A win-win scenario advanced as the gospel truth.

On the contrary, international experience has shown that, except for the huge profits raked in by the supermarket chains, organized retail has been a lose-lose scenario for farmers, small traders and wholesalers, consumers, and the environment and therefore society as a whole.

Food waste in Supermarkets    India is the world’s second largest producer of fruits and vegetables in the world after China, producing around 180 million tonnes. Official estimates are that about 25-30 percent of this produce goes waste between harvest and consumption. In theory, if fresh produce is collected efficiently at the farm-gate, and end-to-end cold-chain is maintained in storage and transportation till it reaches supermarket shelves as in developed countries, this wastage can be eliminated, translating into better prices for the farmer and lower prices for the consumer besides greater availability of the produce for processing, export and other value-addition. In practice, a very different story emerges from the West.

In the US, official data show 27-33 percent of food being wasted between farm and consumer during collection, storage, distribution and consumption! Of course, this also includes the horrendous amount of food waste generated in households and restaurants, but the amount of wastes within the distribution system is not much less.

Supermarkets themselves in the US are estimated to throw away $20 billion (Rs.95,000 crores) worth of food every year, more than twice as much as in the EU. Huge quantities of fresh fruit, vegetables and meats are routinely thrown away by supermarkets every day partly from fear of spoilage but also simply because they appear unappealing to consumers. Food products constitute 63 percent of a supermarket’s waste, according to a study by the California Integrated Waste Management Board. The logic of supermarkets dictates that they stock and display huge quantities of fresh produce, unsold stocks being simply thrown away. Supermarkets also compete with each other on the quality of their produce. This requires bulk suppliers to conduct ruthless sorting, throwing away otherwise edible but unappealing produce. In fact in the EU, prior to 2009 when a new policy came into effect, supermarkets were required by law to discard misshaped fruit and vegetables!

Supermarkets in the EU and USA are now being motivated to dispose of their wastes in an environment-friendly way in sanitary landfills or even through gasification or converting to manure, which can also generate some revenues although, of course, it would have been far better if food had not been allowed to become trash in the first place. And all this is only with respect to fresh produce. The supermarket culture of course also encourages packaged, pre-cooked or semi-cooked foods with expiry dates, huge quantities of which again get thrown away by supermarkets each year because of over-stocking. Pre-packaging of groceries and other food items also leads to huge accumulation of packaging material which has to be discarded posing a huge waste disposal and environmental problem, amounting to 5.3 million tonnes in the UK alone!  So much for the saving wastage argument!

Farmers and small traders lose    The other myth about organized retail is that it would benefit farmers and also not harm small traders who could simply shift from the traditional supply chain to the modern one linked to supermarkets. Again the facts are exactly the opposite.

The authoritative UK Competition Commission found in a 2000 study of major retail chains including Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury and Tesco that supermarkets had a poor record on treatment of all categories of suppliers, specifically that “the burden of cost increases in the supply chain has fallen disproportionately heavily on small suppliers such as farmers” (http://www.competition-commission.org.uk/rep_pub/reports/2000/446super.htm#full). Apart from prices, smaller farmers came under severe pressure from supermarkets due to the latter’s requirement for large volumes of each product, pushing farmers to grow single crops rather than the multiple produce they would usually grow to minimize risk. Similarly, insistence on or good prices only for similarly sized produce again works to reduce bio-diversity, pushes prices down and drives suppliers towards more input-intensive factory-farming. The Commission called for greater regulation and enforcement of the UK Fair Trading Code of Practice which it said itself needed to be strengthened to protect smaller suppliers from exploitation engendered by the immense power exercised by large buyers.

Numerous other supermarket practices too worked against the interests of almost all other stakeholders. Supermarket chains routinely sell some products at lower than market prices, which appears to benefit to consumers, but this puts pressure on small local stores in turn having adverse impact especially on low-income and elderly consumers who rely on local shops. Supermarkets also tend to alter prices in different branches adjusting to local rivals, “price-flexing” as the Commission termed it, again working to the disadvantage of local mom-and-pop stores. All in all, the Report said, “27 [such] practices by… major buyers operate against the public interest.”

In its January 2010 report, the UK Competition Commission concluded that the situation had not changed in over a decade, and that the practices of big retail chains continued to cause losses for farmers and small stores. The near-monopoly of supermarket chains, which procure over 70 percent of food products in the UK, enables them to “dictate prices and force farmers into trading for less and less.”  The UKCC found evidence that some chains including Tesco were bullying producers into lowering prices, a charge also leveled by the National Farmers’ Union, with dairy farmers receiving 20 percent less for milk than they did 19 years ago, and over 1,000 dairy farmers having gone out of business in 2009 alone.

FAO in its “Spotlight 2005” Report (http://www.fao.org/ag/magazine/0505sp1.htm) concluded that these trends are witnessed in other countries and regions too, showing once again that these patterns are inherent to the very logic of supermarket chains, not to some peculiarities of Western cultures. Organized retail increases pressure on farmers to produce standardized produce, pushes down prices and margins, and over time weeds out larger numbers of smaller suppliers in favour of fewer and larger “preferred suppliers”. In Malaysia, one chain that had started with 200 suppliers had whittled them down to just 30 within 2 years. Despite the famous sharp preference of Asian consumers for fresh produce from local so-called “wet markets”, big cities of Malaysia saw the share of supermarkets in fresh produce retail rise to 60 percent in fruit and 35 percent in vegetables. Similarly in Bangkok, supermarkets were selling 40 percent of fruit and 30 percent of vegetables by 2002. The FAO Report predicts that, following trends in Europe and the US, Asian markets too will witness gradual marginalization of traditional wholesalers in favour of increasingly consolidated “preferred suppliers” and “dedicated wholesalers” who would be brought into joint ventures or tied-up in long-term contracts.

The Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute says that the heightened penetration of supermarket chains into Asia, Africa and Latin America is locking small farmers out of the supply chain and driving millions of farmers into poverty. Latin America has been the worst hit with the fastest growth in supermarkets, achieving in 10 years diffusion rates that took 50 years in the US! In Brazil, the share of supermarkets in fresh food sales went up from 30 percent to 75 percent in just 10 years between 1990 and 2000.

Supermarket culture and need for Regulation     Colossal waste and inordinate pressure on suppliers are part of supermarket culture. In Singapore, studies have found that close to 30 percent of fresh produce is thrown away in wholesalers’ sorting yards or supermarkets even before they appear on shop shelves because of ostensible defects or being otherwise deemed non-saleable. Within supermarkets themselves, food wastage in Singapore is estimated at 20 percent compared to 30 percent in the US or UK.

Indeed, supermarket waste has reached such proportions that the UK has an active Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) aimed at reducing all forms of wastage in supermarkets. WRAP studies have found that many factors drive such wastage, chief among them being the very character of supermarkets and the type of shopping practices they engender. People shop more and buy far more than they actually consume simply because they can! In major urban centres, where supermarkets are often open round the clock, shoppers end up buying many other items than what they may have come in for, and more than they need. Promotional offers such as buy-one-get-one-free and other so-called multi-buy promotions means that more groceries get pushed than are consumed.

Yet the pressure exerted by the powerful retail chains is such, and the ideology of de-regulation is so strong, that of course one can barely talk of regulation in the US while efforts at regulation in the Eurozone and UK have not made much headway.

The influential UK Sustainable Development Commission (UK-SDC) in its study of policies relating to supermarkets strongly criticized the British government for allowing WRAP to leave it to the supermarkets themselves to formulate a voluntary self-regulatory set of practices to reduce waste termed the Courtald Agreement. UK-SDC stated that “too many supermarket practices are… unhealthy, unjust and unsustainable.” Needless to say, the UK-SDC report covered many other areas of supermarket operations too besides the issue of food and other waste.

An even broader ambit was covered by the UK Competition Commission whose 2000 Report cited earlier led to the proclamation of a Supermarkets Code of Practice which was later amended in 2009 to the Groceries Supply Code of Practice (GSCOP) that lays down standards and procedures for procurement, fair trade, inventories and sales, and so on.

It is indeed significant that in all the debate in India around organized retail, no industry or government body has said a word about regulation or the need for it. For all their weaknesses, it is the presence and functioning of regulatory bodies in the UK and EU, in contrast to the situation prevalent in the US, that has at least thrown up a substantial amount of data and analytical information, and brought supermarkets under public scrutiny and the possibility of at least some social control.

20th June, 2010

D. Raghunandan

THE horrific on-going disaster caused by oil spewing out from British Petroleum’s (BP) well in the Gulf of Mexico is going from bad to worse, showing little signs of abating. It is already by far the biggest oil spill in the US and rapidly becoming one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in the US if not the world. The oil slick is spreading by the day and threatening new areas. The federal government has banned fishing in more than 37 per cent of the US part of the Gulf of Mexico, double the area under a fishing ban imposed mid-May.

BP is responding in a manner typical of large multinational corporations (MNCs), especially oil companies, trying to minimise the damage while spending as little money as possible, evading legal liability, and treating the whole episode as primarily a public relations issue. BP is once again showing that Big Oil is the dirtiest of businesses, in more ways than one.

The US administration under President Barack Obama is facing its toughest test yet. Its credibility has come under severe pressure, with the public taking a dim view of the slow and inadequate response of the federal government and what appears to be collusion with BP. Obama is discovering that oratory and rhetoric are assets in a campaign but can boomerang in the face of poor results on the ground. The poor response of the US government under then President George W Bush to Hurricane Katrina came to typify the incompetence, cronyism and lack of caring of the Bush administration. Will the BP oil spill, again affecting the state of Louisiana, prove to be President Obama’s Katrina?

Let us look at what has happened to date.

OIL GUSHER

Normally the term “oil spill” suggests an oil tanker breaking-up or developing a leak. The BP disaster is quite different and should really be called an oil gusher.

On April 20th, an explosion on BP’s “Deepwater Horizon” off-shore oil rig in the US exclusive economic zone in the Gulf of Mexico about 66 km off Louisiana left 17 workers injured and 11 missing, presumed dead. The explosion led to a rupture in the well about 5000 feet below sea level from where oil and gas have been gushing out ever since.

The quantity of oil that has spewed out is still being debated, largely because BP itself has made widely varying statements even while it has prevented independent scientific investigations to estimate the quantum of leakage claiming that this was “not relevant to the response” and that such attempts “might distract from efforts to stem the flow”! Amazingly, the Obama government and even its different scientific agencies such as the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have not insisted on conducting their own assessment, nor have ensured full access to data. Scientists, media personnel and others have been prevented from conducting studies in the spill region not only by BP personnel but also by the US Coast Guard which stated they were “acting under instructions of BP”, lauded BP’s efforts and even conducted joint press briefings, all till June 1 when the Administration decided this cozy relationship was not going down well among the public and announced a track-change putting the onus more sharply on BP.

BP initially estimated that the well was gushing 1000 barrels (160,000 litres) of oil a day. NOAA reached an estimate about 5 times higher at 5000 barrels per day based on early satellite imagery. Under intense media, public and Congressional pressure, a US government team under the US Geological Survey conducted surveys and tentatively estimated a much higher leak rate of 800,000 to 1.8 million gallons (3 to 6.8 million litres) per day. The official Technical Group later put the estimate at a lower 500,000 – 800,000 gallons per day but this was based on merely a 7 minute low-quality undersea video provided by BP showing the oil gushing out, a video feed now being transmitted live by order of Congress. Even at these more conservative figures, 25 to 40 million gallons of oil would have spilled out into the Gulf to date. The previously largest US oil spill, from the Exxon-Valdez tanker in Alaska in 1989, was of 11 million gallons (itself dwarfed by the largest ever spill from a Mexican off-shore rig in 1979 also in the Gulf releasing 140 million gallons of oil).

Worse than the sheer volume of oil, the leak is not on the surface but deep under the sea. Scientists have recently found that large plumes or clouds of oil have formed deep under the sea and are moving quite far. As we go to press, NOAA has reluctantly confirmed that such plumes indeed exist (having earlier joined BP in denying any such phenomena) but claimed they have low concentrations of oil. Several plumes, some as large as 16 km by 4.8 km and 100 metres thick, have been noted, some even 130 km away from the well and sometimes occurring at different depths on top of each other. These plumes comprising oil droplets may cause even more damage to marine life than surface oil because far more species live deeper down and also because oxygen supply would be stifled, one research team estimating it at 30 per cent less than normal. Marine biologists are critical of BP, and of US administration agencies, for not having envisaged and tracked these plumes earlier since their formation after undersea blowouts has been predicted in the scientific literature for years. In the BP oil gusher, chances are that chemical dispersants used to thin out the oil for subsequent clean-up may have actually helped the plumes form, another sign that BP has been fumbling its way along the disaster with no prior preparedness or plan.

TACKLING THE SPILL

There are two broad levels at which the oil spill requires to be tackled. First, to contain the effects of the spill on the surface. Second, to try and stop the leak itself.

Containment measures largely comprise spreading booms or inflatable tubing that float on the surface of the water and physically block the spread of the oil or, in some types of booms, soak it up. Oil will usually stay on top of the water for some time till it gets broken down by the wind, waves and ocean currents., and this oil can be either sucked or skimmed off the top by special ships. So far more than 2 million feet of containment boom and another 2 million feet of absorbent booms have been laid out, and more than 15 million gallons of oil-bearing sea water have been removed.

Chemical dispersants are also used to break down the oil enabling its biodegradation. About 750,000 gallons of dispersant have been used on the surface and another 300,000 gallons at varying depths. However, this procedure is not without risks especially to marine life and, as we have seen in the Gulf, may even have contributed to formation of plumes below the surface. To the best of one’s knowledge, biological agents have not so far been used in the BP disaster. More than 22,000 personnel have been deployed in these operations. Sand banks have also been prepared along certain stretches of coast to prevent ingress of the slick inland or into coastal wetlands and marshes.

Yet for all that local residents are clearly unhappy with the progress. More than 40 per cent of the incomes of people in coastal belts of Louisiana and neighbouring states come from tourism and fishing, both of which have been badly affected, especially the shrimp catch in shallow coastal waters and marshlands. This region contains 40 per cent of US coastal wetlands. Scientists are worried that these fragile coastal belts and wetlands are likely to suffer considerable damage that cannot yet be determined. Water samples all along the Louisiana coast have shown oil and, in some places, the booms near the shore seem to be keeping the oil in by blocking tidal flows as much as they are keeping oil out!

At the time of the rig explosion, the plan had been to plug the well with a cemented cap for later production. The same basic idea was pursued after the well burst but with several variants all of which essentially failed to plug the leak. First a “top hat” procedure --- where a massive concrete dome was lowered over the blow-out preventer (BOP) that had failed to engage as it should have after the explosion --- was tried but did not succeed. Then a special mud was forced down at high pressure, to be followed by cement once it had kept the oil down and settled, but the procedure could not overcome the upward pressure of the oil and gas. Then a so-called “junk fill” was tried replacing the mud with assorted materials. Lastly the well’s riser pipe was cut and a cap forced on to it with a pipe leading up to the surface where the recovered oil is being stored, with BP now proposing to flare it. One ship on the surface is currently handling the oil being pumped up and another one is expected to join soon to help augment processing capacity.

However, because the cut in the pipe is rough and the cap fits poorly, only a portion of the oil gushing out is being collected in this manner. BP started with the claim that it was tapping off around 10,000 barrels or 260,000 gallons per day then upped the claim to about 300,000-600,000 gallons per day which would mean that around half the total oil gushing out from the well is still leaking out into the Gulf.

BP and federal government officials have repeatedly said that all these are only intermediate palliative measures, and that the only real solution to the problem is to drill a relief well besides the ruptured one so that the oil rises up the new well rather than the old one. This is perhaps correct, but the very fact raises a host of questions about how much BP and the US government knew about the blow-out, damage likely to be caused and steps that could have been taken to prevent it or to tackle the problem once it had arisen.

UNSAFE WITH OFFICIAL SANCTION

It has been clear from the very beginning that BP was not only complacent and ill-prepared for the disaster, but had also knowingly cut corners, circumvented safety measures and ignored safety procedures in active connivance with the governmental regulator, the Minerals Management Service (MMS).

The most glaring avoidance of safety precautions was the decision by BP not to install an automatic shut-off valve which should have shut down the flow of oil from the well into the riser pipe immediately after the explosion on the rig. Such cut-off valves are mandatory and standard equipment on European off-shore drilling rigs as British Petroleum well knew. Yet the MMS went along, and also gave exemption to BP from conducting an experimental site analysis because the chances of an oil spill were “minimal or non-existent.”

Since the explosion, BP executives have been repeatedly pointing to the difficulties of operations at depths of around 5000 feet below the sea even though these were well known and should have been anticipated. Yet the fumbling and ad hocism of BP measures since the disaster as described earlier have shown that it had no emergency plans and no equipment on stand-by to deal with a problem if it happened, like a high-rise building with no fire escape and no fire extinguishers. BP chairman Tony Hayward coolly admitted that "what is undoubtedly true is that we did not have the tools you would want in your tool kit" to deal with this kind of well blow-out even though these are familiar and not uncommon in the oil industry.

Incredibly, the MMS has approved 27 new offshore drilling operations since the April 20 explosion, exempting all but one of them from environmental review. To add insult to injury, two of the new operations approved were submitted by BP, which made the same assertions on drilling safety as it had for Deepwater Horizon despite all that had happened since!

President Obama has belatedly said that he would end the “scandalously close relationship” between regulators and the companies they oversee. The MMS chief Elizabeth Birnbaum has since resigned, but people are wondering why Obama had not noticed the deep conflict of interest built into the very structure and role of MMS before. MMS is responsible for leasing off-shore drilling rights, permitting and overseeing operations and collecting royalties, all of which make it develop vested interests in the commencement, continuation and profitability of off-shore drilling rather than a prime responsibility for workers’ safety and environmental protection.

It has also not gone unnoticed that Obama, in March this year, had proposed to allow expanded drilling for oil in the Gulf, the Atlantic and the Arctic, the very things he had criticised his rival Republican candidate John McCain for during the presidential campaign. Obama now wants to appear tougher against BP and other oil giants, and is making a big noise about making BP pay every penny required, and “kicking a**”! But will the bluster actually translate into action?

The Obama administration is said to be working on a new law to raise the limit on liability claims from $10 billion to $75 billion but with the US government having already spent an estimated $20 billion, this may still be far below the actually costs. More importantly, will Obama show the guts to take on Big Oil, and can he muster the legislative support required? Many Senators and Representatives are already towing BP’s line, trying to minimize the damage and shifting blame. Federal agencies such as NOAA, MMS and the Coast guard seem to be acting in collusion with BP although of late at least putting on an appearance of trying to distance themselves. Evidence suggests that Obama is unable or unwilling to exert real pressure on BP, not able even to secure accurate data about the spill whose quantum will of course be critical in determining the extent of damages BP is likely to pay out. Big Oil clearly has longer arms than the law in the US.