V K Raina: The Man Who Came In From The Cold
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Image: Rajnish Katyal
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Raina wants to demolish a few other myths about glaciers, but the immediate priority is his book
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It is the IPCC’s motivation and hand-in-glove nature with policy makers that have come into question. “It is not a scientific body and it has become a political body, dedicated to distorting evidence to support the view that human emissions are dangerous,” says Gray. Kenber, on the other hand, believes that it is inevitable that a scientific body so closely aligned with a political process will come under intense scrutiny.
In reply to an email quesionnaire from Forbes India, IPCC said “there was regrettably a poor application of the IPCC Rules and Procedures” in drafting the paragraph on Himalayan Glaciers. “We reaffirm our strong commitment to ensuring that the author teams apply the IPCC procedures at every stage of the writing and review process in order to fulfil the IPCC mandate,” it said.
The Aftermath
In early 2010, Pachauri dismissed Raina’s report as ‘voodoo science’. But Pachauri himself is no scientist. In his earlier avatars, Pachauri indulged in more prosaic activities like overseeing operations at Diesel Locomotive Works, Varanasi and imparting lessons in economics to management students.
This in no way undermines the man’s achievement though. He had done a very good job building TERI.
Ever since the IPCC won the Nobel, Pachauri has acquired a celebrity status of sorts in the global warming scientific community. He is always on the move; either making speeches, attending conferences, presiding IPCC meetings or meeting policy makers. “The Nobel had its spillover. Earlier, he used to keep to himself but now he’s become more outspoken and sees himself more globally,” says another source who is a member of a TERI committee.
As for Raina, he is unhappy that the work of so many scientists was trashed. “There are people working from Geological Survey, people working from Jammu University, people working from Jawaharlal Nehru University, IITs who had been working on this subject and this is the remark. That’s the tragedy,” he says.
He knows what it is to be a field scientist. A Kashmiri Pandit by birth, Raina has spent more than 35 years studying Himalayan glaciers. And life as a glaciologist hasn’t been easy. He’s walked on foot for months to reach inaccessible glaciers, spent more than three months at a stretch living on glaciers surviving on ‘potatoes and onions’, led two expeditions to Antarctica, broken his leg when he fell into a crevice while coming down from the ‘Gara’ glacier in Himachal Pradesh with the nearest hospital available after five days march. He retired in 1991 with a last-month salary of Rs. 9,000.
Ask his wife about how he feels about the whole thing and Mrs. Raina does. “He says that I just gave the facts of science; and I didn’t mean to confront anybody. Many people wrote to us saying that this is not right. Let him (Pachauri) say what he likes but after all I know what my capabilities are…Waise bhi jo bechara gir gaya hai, use laat kyon maarni,” she adds.
The debate isn’t over but Raina is done with it. He still has plans to demolish a few myths. One of them is that the Gangotri Glacier in Uttarakhand gets affected by pilgrims taking bath in the Ganges or by army vehicles passing through. However, his next big thing is his book.
Pachauri has been resisting calls for stepping down from the IPCC chair. For the rest of us who don’t want to confuse ‘science’ with ‘kazoombaa’, Gray has some advice, “There’s one (scientific study) born every minute. If somebody tells you what is going to happen in 100 years’ time I suggest kicking him out of the door.”
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