May 26, 2015

Indian Warming-Clearly Globalization hasnt worked here!

It is indeed time to call it Indian Warming for some of our patriotic idiots to seethe to the reality of the planet's climate change, which the scientific community, including the Indian ones, have attributed to human intervention. A lot of Indians, general public,uninformed media, educated elite and the policy making bureaucrats have come across as completely unaware of the effects of Climate change in India and continue to treat it as a global phenomenon not affecting our policies and decisions in life.

As an old-time blogger and a human-race sympathiser, I have only one medium to vent out my feelings. I blog. 

Global warming is not something that has to be explained to, but the effects of the Greenhouse gases that will be emitted when mined-hydrocarbons are burned, are known and perhaps is a simple 2-mark question for even the 10th standard student who wrote his SSLC this year. Being a developing country, India, says it cant afford to take the competitive disadvantage of not burning Hydro-carbons as India, as a nation, needs to develop too. The Chinese say the same thing and therefore there is no question of the countries with about 50% global population of the world today, continues to say, "We don't care!" 

A closer look at the statement from an Indian context is what I am planning to do here. I hope this will make help some people who are upbeat and enthused about India's multi-crore coal auction, easing of forest norms, construction of new ports, new tourist destination or even a new shopping complex understand that there are adverse climatic impact due to each and every action. 

"Behold! These are costs that we have to pay for our development!"

Unfortunately, mother earth can not treat her cancer, that she already has, by letting our nation alone cancer her further. So in the interests of the territorial integrity of India and the survival of its diverse nature, I try to answer a few developmental questions myself. 

"Acche din for everyone! Har har growth! Ghar ghar Development"

On the face of it, everyone wants to be prosperous and therefore creating a decent paying in a rural sub-urb, promising some 1000s of youth jobs in the country will go a long way in achieving that goal.
So the government says we want to build factories, using the fertile/forest lands, using semi-skilled labour-force, mass-manufacturing goods to supply  all over the world. 

"So this isn't helping India with the goods we built mostly, is it?"

Factories running on Urban infrastructure like good rail connectivity, road connectivity, plenty of clean water, skilled manpower are expected to open-up in a Rural neighbourhood that is neither connected nor have the skills. So, in the hype to get more factories open up in Rural India, our government is focusing on converting the sub-sub-urban villages that will anyway fall under the realm of development because of its proximity to the cities, sooner or later. How many private factories have cropped up in the interiors of Bihar or on the peripherals of  Tamilnadu or even on the coastlines of Orissa. 

"Don't be a fool! Where are the basic infrastructures in the places where you say!"

This presents a blend of unique sociological, ecological and not the least economical issues along with it. A semi-skilled labour will not be even able to afford the kind of life he was used to in the countryside. So, he is basically chasing money, in search of a life style that matches his pre-industrial lifestyle. Talk about progress!

"This is so 18th Century!" 

Industrial revolution did revolutionize. It did bring in research and innovation based economy from a paternal family trait follower. But, but, but, hasn't the world moved on from Industrial revolution to computing revolution to dot com revolution to Life-Technology revolution. Sticking to Industrial revolution ONLY and assuming that India is already there in other ones is just naive. Indian development story has to revolve around our needs rather than telling that world that we will make your nuts and bolts. We are no third-world citizens and the government's and by extension people who support it are inclined to believe so!

Where is the raw material coming from?
Just for example, we are going to be a Nuts and bolts exporter for the world. We take out all the resources for the making of nuts and bolts, basically cast iron, from India and export them around the world without putting them to use in our country's actual demand for production of defence, agricultural and constructional needs of the future. Note: I am not fully against mining, for we wouldn't be here without mining. There is a need for conserving scarce natural resource in our country and world isn't ending anytime soon.

"What does this have to do with warming?"

Rampant industrialization to the extent of extreme shortsighted development is dwindling our existing forest cover and depleting the green trap we have been naturally gifted for trapping CO2. Forests and green areas are being considered, as a mindset, as something that we have absolute control to and  anything can be done to it. There is going to be terrorists and greediest, but many "you and me"'s now consider forest destruction is the way to go about. Take for example the coal auction: We just auctioned coal for 1,80,000,000,00,00 rupees! What we would do is, mine coal more than we need, burning more greenhouse gas than ever before and export coal to some other nation on the earth who will burn the coal releasing more Co2. Do we want to do that?

Government needs more energy. Clearly, coal is not the fuel of the future. Do we have alternate fuels that will cater to India? Hell yes! Do we have government conviction? Our PM did demonstrate his willingness to explore alternate energy sources like the sun and wind. 

Very hot summers, unseasonal rainfalls, Prolonged drought spells and raising sea-levels should cause huge panic in us. But somehow, our national focus always seems to be compensation for land, loss and lost time on Make in India. 

There are some basic questions here:
1) Why are we trying to move people out of agriculture into semi-skilled to unskilled labour work in factories, where they have poorer living standards, unable to embrace modern technology and no appreciable job guarantee.

2) Why do we have to mine ever so faster and export ever too sooner to a foreign nation when we need those resources for our needs, tomorrow or the day-after.

3) Why ruin the environment when neither our nation is improving nor its citizens are benefiting out of it.

Are you an economics professor or a climate scientist?

Neither am I an economics professor to enunciate the short comings of the industrial policies, its impact nor am I a climate scientist to profess knowledge on global warming caused by mankind. But I call myself human enthusiast. I wish this breed of animal survive its test of time and don't destroy its fellow being due to its own internal greed.

Do we have scope for young Indians to join the mainstream of development from the confines of their villages, wherein we have spent a great amount of fortune to get basic development into them.
It does have a lot of potential solutions. Like making farming as a service or FAAS, co-operative farming, like investment into existing grid power storage like re-pumping water back to the Hydro power plant, exploring the tidal energy and investing heavily on Research on renewable energy areas. 

"Have patience, right time will have to come for all this! After all, Rome was not built in a day"

All I am asking of the "everyday you and me" is this. Understand that we need tomorrow. Our kids need a good nation to live. See how nations struggle to preserve their lakes, rivers, forests and mountains. Respect the nature and plan your development around it not against it. Use technologies to build clean energy, factories and houses. Plant trees. Billion of them. Water them and save them. 
Don't eat elephants land, tigers land, Boar's land or a farmer's land. Don't rob river of sand, give her water for she will give sand. I don't want to get preachy but you get the point.

"Earth doesn't not need you to save her. She is fine without you and me. We just need to save ourselves to sustain"