Infrastructure Engineering and Poverty Alleviation

S S CHAKRABORTY Chairman, Second Vivekananda Bridge Tollway Company Pvt. Ltd., India Chakraborty S S, born 1937, holding a Civil Engg. Degree from University of Calcutta, India, is a bridge and structural engineer of exemplary global repute. His bridge designs, in India and abroad, while focusing on technical innovations and excellence, have also stressed the designs developmental impacts on the society a matter of exhibiting high Social Competence

1.

Introduction

Speaking in front of an international audience, yet situated at the periphery of Sunderbans, it is only appropriate that I begin with the worlds largest estuarine forest and delta covered by mangrove, the challenges it poses, the opportunities it offers. There is a strong movement afoot to leverage the economic opportunities the lay of the land and its native biosphere afford, through integrated development; integrated in the sense of tuning infrastructure, both physical and social, towards stewardship and enhancement of the resources sustainably and successfully. Engineering being a rational endeavor yet accommodating empiricism is most perfectly suited for such initiatives, and where engineering is, employment follows close behind. As per news reports, we are on to MDG II: a campaign named My World to involve people across the social and economic spectrum by the UN office in India. People are demanding better job opportunities. Notwithstanding the above, I will anchor my paper on opportunities for better jobs for engineers vis--vis what I may term as regular jobs. What is needed is for the engineers to devise engineering solutions for the pressing problems of the society, help find ways to put purchasing power in the hands of the people - through Developmental Engineering. What do I mean by Developmental Engineering? It is the engineering that finds immediate applications towards social progress that is equitable and broad-based. In this context, engineers who have acquired a broader perspective towards useful application of scientific progress are Developmental Engineers, focused on development through engineering. Poverty is not merely the lack of money, or even, in general terms, resources. There is poverty of opportunity, limited accessibility and affordability. There is energy/power poverty, transport poverty, water poverty, public hygiene poverty, environmental poverty, disaster response poverty It is this comprehensive reckoning of poverty that infrastructure must address. Thus, Developmental Engineering is infrastructure engineering, and our efforts must be to alleviate poverty through infrastructure, through infrastructure engineering. I recognize that industrial engineering too contributes towards poverty alleviation but its connection to society is routed through the employment opportunities it opens up, hence one step removed vis--vis infrastructure engineering.

2.

Energy/Power Poverty

It is an iconic image, the view of the earth at night from space. If you enlarged it, you would instinctually understand why Egypt is Gift of Nile, how the Trans-Siberian Railway is an economic attractor, why the US and Europe are considered economic giants; you can also discern pockets of severe under development in certain areas of the globe, and of India too. Most of that darkness signifies lack of opportunities, energy poverty.

How to eradicate energy poverty? The engineering solution is multi-disciplinary and demands seamlessness. Different engineers have to talk the same language. Take the case of solar updraft tower which converts solar energy into electricity and utilizes local labor, local material, and involves no hi-tech Intellectual Property Right issues. It is a proven technology combining greenhouse effect with the chimney effect and turbines marriage of science and technology. Water requirements are minimal. The technology requires facility in the language of engineering, across disciplines and also the language of economic growth and holistic development. People value energy for the productive use they can put it to cook food without creating indoor pollution, like solar cooker in remote areas; heat water to help the midwife ensure a safe delivery; bring on light for the children, be it the hurricane lamp or the incandescent lamp, to study for tomorrows exam. But the language is one of energy and power. There are three distinct phases of getting energy to people generation, transmission and distribution that define seamlessness, built into developmental engineering. In the generation phase we have a number of sources and source mechanisms thermal with different fuels, each with its own carbon burden, hydro, nuclear, renewables with myriad mechanisms like dirty coal, clean natural gas, shale gas, large, mini, micro hydropower stations, wind, solar, tidal, and geothermal.

No matter the choice, engineering involvement is sine qua non. Take geothermal, for instance. It brings foundation engineering, pile foundations and melds it with heat transfer to tap heat from the soil and heat the building founded on the piles. No carbon emissions, a developmental positive and as such a proxy for war on poverty. Engineers have to be aware of the developmental consequences of any effort to address energy poverty. It will be no good if energy poverty is merely shifted to environmental poverty. An inefficient thermal power plant may carry a negative health premium; a hydropower, an environmental; a tidal, an ecological; nuclear, a safety premium and so on. Evacuation of generated power and transmission to load centers will bring in a host of regulatory obstacles. Clearing these obstacles convincingly needs an engineering viewpoint leavened with governance perspectives. Engineers will have to look at the possibility of distributed generation say, mini or micro hydels that obviates transmission. Remember, remote areas are typically power starved and getting grid power is also involved. Then, engineers contribute to poverty alleviation by letting such areas shine light on themselves.

3.

Transport Poverty

There is tremendous urban in-migration from rural areas with the pull factor the attractive life opportunities fully operative. It is rather unfortunate that urban in-migration, for lack of accessible and affordable infrastructure, ghettoizes poverty. Offer transport opportunities. A colleague of mine tells me that every day the flower vendor who serves his household rides the Delhi Metro from her outlying area and commutes a distance of about 7 km in the comfort of the metro coach. Now, that is a developmental positive enabled by engineering catering to the lower economic strata of society. She saves time and carries a heavier business load (negotiating the security check). She earns more money, has higher purchasing power which transfers to others in her neighborhood. This is, to look at from a different vantage point, a transfer of economic activities from the core urban to the surrounding areas. This has an effect on reducing inequality, a developmental positive enabled by a transport facility, an engineering contribution. The Delhi Metro, as all the other initiatives across the country make opportunities accessible to the flower vendors, to mention only one category. Just imagine where the Dabbawala, about whom students of Harvard heard, would be without the Mumbai suburban trains. That is another example of enterprise and transport systems coming together for the benefit of all a characteristic of infrastructure.

Transport infrastructure breaks the barriers between rural and urban areas. Even while we focus on fast inter-city travel, say, between Delhi and Agra or Delhi and Jaipur, our concerns should spill over to the rural areas enroute. Typically, in developing nations, the fast corridor isolates the communities on either sides of the alignment. The opportunities that were open to them, in modern language the supply chain, are suddenly closed. It is here the engineers have to play a proactive part. Even when deciding on the alignment, the Developmental Engineer will understand the lay of the land from the point of view of the society and economics, and provide for enough crossing channels. What about the cost, one may ask. It is again within the capability of the engineer. For example, have you ever crossed a "bridge in a backpack"? You could be doing so in the near future as people are doing on the Neal Bridge in rural Maine in the USA. The bridge is made from innovative carbon fiber tubes that are inflated to surround a steel support structure built in the shape of the bridge span. Creating a bridge span took just one hour to complete. So, the engineer says to the protesting local population, Look, give me one hour and you will have no problem crossing over to the other side, and carry on your usual business, social, religious activities. This is a quality of life issue as much as an economic and poverty related one.

4.

Water and Public Hygiene Poverty

Across the globe people are facing water-distress. Without clean water whatever developmental input a society makes, is bound to leak out in health of individuals, in epidemics, in food scarcity and malnutrition, having the most deleterious effects on the poor. What does an engineer, a Developmental Engineer do anything about that? The options cover the gamut from the simple and expedient controlled chlorination say, a drop per glass as is being practiced in Kenya and other places to major, cost-intensive desalination. This is not engineering, but science is built into it, the controlled amount of chlorination for a bucketful. It is cost effective. Now, that is another point I would like to address. What do we mean by cost-effective? We recognize the value of a currency. Engineers have to acclimatize themselves to terms of developmental economics if they have grand aspirations to contribute to poverty alleviation. This is better explained in terms of drainage, a recurring urban debilitation given the fierce competition and demand for land. A cesspool creates not just stench, but also mosquitoes. Each

mosquito bite is an environmental developmental nightmare, malaria, affecting the poor disproportionately. Thus, we can put a cost to the number of mosquitos eradicated because as engineers we drained that land and created a permanent healthy habitat while catering to the natural drainage of the land. This is rudimentary developmental economics. What is true for drainage is truer for sanitation. There is a focus on, besides the health aspects, on the privacy aspects of lack of sanitation facilities. Now, providing sanitation facilities by itself is not necessarily an engineering task; yet, sewage disposal is. The engineer finds it difficult to procure a space for the facility in the densely built-up urban areas. Here, a dry latrine is a solution. He or she has to join hands with developmental and governance professionals and effectively argue against the NIMBY (Not-in-my-backyard) syndrome that dominates our social interactions. The engineer who is true to the mandate of development recognizes that he is a cog in the wheel of governance. Engineering is not mere engineering. It is also the matter of selling engineering, honest selling, of course.

5.

Contingent Poverty Disaster Mitigation, Management

Chronic poverty is almost exclusively sociological issue; engineering may have very little to offer. But, contingent poverty is a different matter altogether. The contingency under focus now, in the aftermath of floods in the state of Uttarakhand, is disasters. Even the population that was not poor is sent across the threshold into poverty. For example, many villages in the Alaknanda Valley downstream of Kedarnath face this grim future, if we deem to call it future. As backsliding is very difficult to stop, it would be better to build backstops. Here, how engineering interventions play a constructive role in avoiding instances of imposed poverty is obvious. We have robust understanding of the mechanics of disaster, from trying to predict it to coping with it. We have our codes and specifications. We have lists of dos and donts to foreclose disaster situations. Unfortunately, there are strong economic and social forces, typically short-term, that run counter to engineering advice. This is how we have had buildings built right on the banks of Himalayan rivers that caved in or washed away under heavy and incessant rains in Uttarakhand last summer. This happened despite having had record-breaking torrential rains in the same location more than forty years ago. The intervening years were wasted, from the perspective of learning through adversity. This is a repeat phenomenon in the poor countries, possibly to be put down to what one may call attitude. We understand economics in the short term and build bridges that do not assign an appropriate return period for floods and they get washed away, again as happened in Uttarakhand. We do not practice building earthquake resistant buildings, as has happened repeatedly in Uttarakhand and elsewhere. All of these instances result in one certainty contingent poverty. It is the unavoidable and discouraging truth that engineers cannot compel the optimistic public to invest in safety, however marginally costlier it may be.

Further, what engineers may be lacking is in the context of disasters engineers think and society feels disaster. The LAquila earthquake of 2009 is a case that highlights the different perspectives. The communication gap between these two has to be bridged. We should equip our engineers, as a measure of reducing contingent poverty, with enhanced communication skills. They should be able to effectively translate hard engineering numbers into what the society can digest. This is what a Developmental Engineer has to be equipped to do.

6.

Opportunities for Better Jobs

I claimed that my paper will be anchored to opportunities for better jobs. It is time for you to hold me to that self-defined mandate. My first defense is to read better not numerically, but in terms of quality of jobs. I have atomized, in an engineering sense, poverty energy and power, transport, water, public hygiene and contingent. And in each one of them I have stressed that engineering solutions exist that also show the concern of the engineering fraternity towards holistic development of society, poverty alleviation being an integral part of the paradigm. You can be an engineer who did not care for depleting natural resources while generating power, but you could also be one who cares and more importantly, works towards ameliorating the situation. You would, being a Developmental Engineer, worry about GHG emissions. The conscientious engineer will not isolate the migrating rural poor to their own means; she will make the urban opportunities accessible to the migrants. You would communicate honestly about the social benefit of public hygiene, trying to overcome the NIMBY induced inertia. If engineers want to be involved in social development, they need to look out for better jobs and not merely better job opportunities. This is what Developmental Engineering means.

7.

Summary and Conclusion

Having started the paper with Sunderbans, let me begin to conclude, again with Sunderbans. The integrated development the professionals are looking at for Sunderbans traverses the gamut of infrastructure, starting with accessibility through, roads, railways and air; through increasing the economic activity by bringing in deep water port; through hospitality industry, eco-tourism of the kind seen in the Everglades in Florida or the bayous of Louisiana in the United States; tidal power from the tidal estuarine as being done in South Korea and being mooted in southwestern England. There is no dearth of opportunities, each leavened by expertise in engineering and each tuned to employment opportunities for the prepared engineer. The prepared engineer is prepared in at least dual dimensions, in engineering and in beyond-engineering, such as holistic development, poverty alleviation. We must understand, if not the genesis of poverty, why it is sustained. Persistent poverty in society is not exclusively the fault of the poor, but combines the result of lack of attitude in the society as a whole; of love for right work at right time, the will to be technically, productive , not to be satisfied with sub-standard production, to aim for the engineering best . The word poverty has to be atomized and the various items as mentioned above have to be dealt with separately, yet within an integrated perspective a balancing act. While at the working level poverty alleviation is one of providing transport, sanitation, water and other such infrastructure

facilities, the focus must be in enhancing the quality of life of the poor. This perspective would also include additions to the language of engineering, in taking infrastructure to society. This is what we would call infrastructure engineering. To conclude, engineering is not merely engineering anymore. Engineers must look out for, and be prepared to avail of, opportunities for better jobs. That is how they will enhance infrastructure engineering and contribute towards poverty alleviation.