How fast are we going now???

Dr Shiva Iyer Aka Sivaram Hariharan

Professor

SHOULD WE CONTINUE BETTING ON THE WRONG HORSE

It was post World War-II and a giant superpower was in the making by torching the global firmament with its exponential economic progress. The land of the free and the brave, as it so prided in itself, was setting the example to all other nations as to what was real meaning of modern economic progress. Of course, there were other nations in Western Europe and East Asian nations like Japan that were also progressing in heap and bounds. And then there was the other (now defunct) superpower Russia with its own ideology and agenda of modern progress. But no one could outrival the USA in its rapid rise to the top of the global power hierarchy, both in money and muscle. And these countries were rapidly establishing a huge gap from the rest of the world and began getting termed as the developed world.

While each nation of the developed world had their specific development trajectories, they all had one thing in common. All their economic engines were firmly coupled with global warming processes, generating colossal amounts of greenhouse emissions as well as huge carbon footprints. And nothing epitomized this more than the great USA with its titanic guzzling of fossil fuels in its insatiable demand for power and more power. In fact, each and every American household and adult individual came to signify this big carbon-imprint lifestyle (the hedonistic 60s, 70s, and the greedy 80s) that lead to rampant consumerism.

But all this had come at a very convenient time for America and indeed the rest of the west. In a way, their progress had kick-started at about a right time window in the eco-history of the planet. When most other nations were either slumbering or just recovering from centuries of colonial occupation and somehow finding their seams, the USA was ready to rocket. And the conditions and the raw materials, it seemed, were available in almost infinite quantities from the rest of the world, especially those poor nations of Africa and Asia, desperate to sell their former colonial masters at throw away prices just to ensure their survival. The rich nations dictated the balance of trade by their economic and military might. Moreover, the USA was blessed with abundance regarding its own internal natural resources and its boom reached a fossil fuel guzzling frenzy by the time the sixties and the seventies came around.

While the living standards rose astronomically in the developed world, so also did the average wages of their denizens. It was precisely this factor that slowly started to shift the economic balance towards the developing nations of third world, especially Asia, as they stepped in with their almost endless supply of cheap labour. Overnight, many of these countries became the backdoor sweatshops of the big industries of the western world, mass producing their goods with dirt cheap labour. It was around this time, (the late eighties to be precise) the IT and the Internet revolution made its appearance to forever change the course of human history. And herein countries like India with a huge base of educated and skilled manpower, especially in the field of software, gave the word outsource a new meaning altogether. All of us know what happened after that and India would never be the same. And this was ratified by the liberalization of the Indian economy in the early nineties.

The seeds for a material Indian boom were thus laid during those initial years of the liberalization. And therein an insatiable thirst for fossil fuels was ignited and it was a thirst like never seen before. Of course, the neo-economic giant to India’s north had already taken the lead down the same carbon-road and was already guzzling in fossil fuels in colossal quantities. The economic rewards reaped through the guzzling were there for everyone to see in the form of a glittering Shanghai. And India did not want to wait any longer. It was high time India did a Shanghai too and its development boom went up another gear. And the incredible economic gains made consequently gave the nation the proud tag of yet another rising Asian economic giant. There was no looking back for both China and India now. They had indeed arrived on the global stage and ready to rub shoulders with the big boys of the west.

But unfortunately for both these giants in the making, their material boom has come at an inopportune time in the ecological timeline of the planet. The industrial revolution and the post world war boom of the West had already set global warming and climate changing forces into motion, but their impacts were still not felt and the planet could still absorb the ecological abuse of the fossil fuel guzzling. But when China and India have also joined in this binge, the tolerance point of Mother Nature has been brought to the brink to the extent that the planet is threatened with irreversible climate change and catastrophically ecological and economic collapse.

Of course when America and other western nations cry foul over China and India’s fuel and resource consumption, the two Asian giants have every right to feel outraged. The justification for their right to economic development along the same lines as of the west seems highly tenable, but it is also something that the planet cannot afford. To put it in another way, this material boom for these two nations has come at the wrong time in the ecological timeline of the planet.

In this context, one wonders as a normal day2day citizen of India as to whether we are really embarking on the right road to progress. In this context some of the decisions taken by the Indian government as well as leading Indian businesses look moot. And here are some of the recently announced ones that could potentially come back to bite in the long run.

1> The Indian government’s decision to expand domestic air travel.

2> Giant Industrial house Tata’s nano car. (an eco-oxymoron)

3> The diplomatic offensive launched by the Indian government and indeed many other countries to get a short term reduction in crude oil prices. (IMHO, extremely short sighted policy of many head of states with their eyes only set on appeasing vote banks.)

4> No initiative on any indigenous development of any alternate sources of energy. As an example, the entire desert wastelands of Rajasthan could potentially be turned into a solar-power hub, almost meeting the entire needs of Rajasthan and maybe some adjacent states as well.

5> The relentless drive by vested commercial interests and land sharks in acquiring verdant farm lands and turning them into resource consuming bricks and mortar.

6> The unending pollution of the big Indian metros and sadly now even the smaller towns.

7> The rampant destruction of flora and fauna and the threat of extinction to the apex predator of the Indian jungle, the tiger and which ironically is our national animal. And in a strange coincidence, it looks increasingly to follow the tragic fate of our national sport hockey, both victims of big money as well as vested political interests.

8> The destruction of our rich and varied local cultures and traditions and local languages.

The list here just mentions some of the potentially ecocidal pathways and there are scores of other policies (both public and private) that are bordering on the potentially catastrophic to the environment.

The serious question that we should ask ourselves is about the trajectory of our economic development. Should we really emulate the USA and transform this ancient land into a featureless consumerist blob. Doesn’t our ancient heritage and more importantly our environment deserve better?? Is money always going to be the bottom line or are there other viable non-monetary parameters to judge the health and progress of a nation?