:: Delhi Greens ::

Last week, Central Board of Secondary-school Certification Examinations (CBSE) began in Delhi and all over India. It is the first public examination for the children of 10th standard. This is the first among various other public exams that a child will face in her/his life. Almost all of us have gone through such a phase in our lives.

Remember our parents accompanied us mostly with our younger siblings in the tow, for the exams. Most of us are children of families where there are two or at best three children with both parents working. Our parents heavily emphasized the importance of these exams right from the day we joined the schools we went to. So did our schools and its faculty.

Remember the rush outside the assigned schools that is our centre? No matter how broad the roads outside the schools are, there is always chaos outside the gate, the honking, the traffic jams. Each of our parents have to drive us down to the centre to absolve us of our stress. Then there is an equally chaotic exit when the paper has ended.

There is a police station right at the mouth of the lane where my daughter goes for her exams. As a parent, it took me half an our to come out of the gate to the main road which is less than 100 meters. And an hour to get out of the same road after the exams were over when I went to pick up my child. As you can see I am no exception to this.

So what is the issue? The issue is neither the school that is the centre nor the police who are responsible for managing the traffic outside respective school premises. All that is needed is a small bit of traffic management. A simple one way sign that directs the traffic from one end of the lane to the other and a person authorized to do so. The issue is not to blame or find faults with anyone, but to look for something that is missing–the presence of which would make a difference. The issue is that no one is ready to take the responsibility.

Ever considered the question: how do we acquire knowledge about the physical environment around us? The easiest way to get to know about environment in general and environmental issues in particular is to open a text book. In our academic curriculum, in our schools and colleges, in any discipline, we will get enough information about the issues and problems of modern day environment. If we are extra curious, we can go to the nearby library to get books on specific aspects of environment like wildlife or birds or trees or flowers and butterflies.

Beyond this there are those interesting slide shows by people who have gone there and captured it all in slides or movies of their own. These are frequently offered in colleges and University film clubs and in IIC and IHC in the city.  If we are a little more adventurous, we can visit a National Park or a game sanctuary and take pictures of nature with our own cameras. Ask any WWF enthusiast about the pictures s/he took, the taste of the tamarind flower he ate, or the wild berry he bit on or the honey at the bottom of the flower he sucked on and you will get a whole new story about the experience they have to share. Then there are National Geographic etc. channels that let nature into your house.

Further, you can separate out those who are enthusiasts, from those who are committed through their own action and supporting actions of others towards conservation of nature. These are the people who always get a yes! for whatever they propose at the level of action. They powerfully invite us common people to participate. They stand for environment and provide the opportunity and credibility. They are straight forward through out their life about their commitment to nature. For such persons, there would be an interesting answer for this question. They will all be able to share with you that one moment at which it all began. That first moment, that one innocent experience from their childhood that truly touched them. That is when the proverbial moth transformed into the butterfly.

I am not anywhere near say Sunderlalji Bahuguna etc, but for me too there has been a moment. It is those evenings on the beach, when I was 7 or 8 years of age, standing on the edge of a wave breaker wall and jumping off on to the wet sands below. Those brief moments when I could feel myself flying. That determined my commitment and love for nature. What was yours? Do contribute…

Walking in the Lodhi Gardens, what captured my eye was the flocking instinct of black birds. They were all sitting gathered on a wire in a row with each one of them facing the same direction. Every few minutes they would fly away and sit again on the same wire. I have no idea as to what prompted the flying. There was no clearly defined leader yet they all seemed to follow something. A similar behaviour can be observed among swifts, pigeons and parrots. While crows and falcons that gather around dump sites do so in a hierarchy.

We have an equivalent of this behavior among nomadic tribes, zoom cultivators and hunter gatherers as I learnt during my recent trip to Mizoram. We are the only animals who are capable of collective actions that go beyond just gathering together. For that to happen we need to maintain the uniformity of language and communication over time and space. We, in its modern day equivalent, do it through conferences and meetings of professionals and on chats and facebook, etc.

The need to communicate is to stay connected. Just as we need each other to biologically reproduce, we need each other to socially reproduce so we can communicate with each other and relate to experiences. Spoken language alone is not enough. Social reproduction allows us to create civilizations, Taj Mahal, Sanchi Stupa, Jantar Mantar, etc. that can only happen when societies feel connected and are able to go beyond everyday existence to create something magnificent.

Interestingly my field work in Delhi slums showed that the migrants into the city too follow this behaviour. Those that come into the city in search of labour do not settle randomly. They settle near people of their ‘own type.’ The single male migrants live as paying guests with people from their own village, region, who eat the same food and speak the same language. So often, in spite of them being slums, one finds unique constructions of these huts.

Thank you for reading your blogs so carefully and with so much interest. It is what makes them available. But not every action everywhere are good. The context determines it.

To recapitulate, Govind Singh some time back listed in his post on this very blog, five main reasons to save tigers. I had shared the impact of this increased consciousness on the shift in status of the tribe called the Moghiyas from being brave Tiger hunters to being poachers to be shunned by society. And being one more reason why and how 1411 tigers are left to ’save the tiger’. So you can pay higher and higher to ad agencies and cricketers and hockey players to raise consciousness and spend (and make) lots of money.

A telecom company is making every attempt to go environment friendly as against its competition and is talking of saving the paper. What is an average Delhi resident going to contribute?  Besides talking about it, blogging, chatting etc. is they will want to go and visit these 1411 animals.

Already at Ranthambore Tiger Reserve, during any given season when the park is open, there are a minimum of 60 to 80 tourist vehicles each carrying a minimum of 4 to 5 tourists and for 8 months of the year say 200 days. Tiger reserve visitor proxy to back of the envelope calculations indicate that if each tourist on an average stays for three days and spends say about 3000/- per day or Rs. 10,000/- a visit. This leads to a conservative economy of 80 crores. If the advertising actually leads to increase in environmental tourism, the impact it has on the tigers is humongous. Not all of it is good. For example every tourist visiting the reserve wants to go and ‘site’ a tiger. The tiger on the other hand loses its ear of humans and obviously cannot differentiate between a hunter and a tourist. So hunting becomes easier.

Mainly it leads to a thriving economy that generates its own economic and political interests. These interests then generate their own vested interests in having tigers but how many? Keeping just a few decorative show pieces, not unlike circus animals, on display is all that is needed. Next comes the leopards that are used by jewelers to advertise their jewelry. Next is what..not..

It is all about Money, Honey! Think about it.

The “world to word’ paradigm allows us to fix and manipulate the world in order to control and dominate it.  The environmental perceptions dictates clichés such as “the world we live in, we have borrowed from our children rather than inherited from our elders” or “earth has enough resources to meet all our needs but not enough to meet even one person’s greed.”  “Today’s solutions are tomorrow’s problems.”

Therefore, the solutions we look for are embedded in the way we use language to define our problems. We look at our physical environment as a solution to our problem of survival: problem of having adequate food, water, and air, using energy. So the solutions are also dictated by it. It allowed us to separate certain parts of environment as natural resources. We then used the words to create the processes and machines to produce goods and services and satisfy our needs.

This is the old story…This construction of the world as an instrument for the consumption of human beings we are told is the root cause of the environmental problems of today.  Is there an option?

Yes! We create ‘word to world’ fit. Use words to ‘create’ the world that we live in. Therefore among Eskimo’s there are 24 worlds to describe the snow while in English we have only 6 and in any Indian language, there are just one or two. While we have specific and multiple words to describe say the contents of polluted water supply or air pollution, most cultures would not even notice it if the water looked clear and tasted fine or the air did not smell foul. It presents a world where language creation is a creative act that allows us to create a whole new world, to which we did not have access to. From this ‘word to world’ fit we have complete access to ourselves and to others, to the very essence and possibility of what it is to be human.

Then environment does not get divided into natural resources and pollutants, but as the infinite possibilities that we can image and create. Not as problems to be solved due to our actions but creative ways of connecting with the environment and with each other.

The very perception of dividing environment into natural resources and waste is an artificial division. The wrecks/ scraps from one culture/society, old battle ships of the cold war era, dismantled in Dang, Gujarat, is a resource for the transformers providing electricity 24*7 in Indian small scale industry. Garbage disposed in urban Municipal landfills, today’s waste, is a potential for energy production of the future – producing methane.

On lines of ‘Avatar’ the movie, we can even think of having intra- species communication. Communicate with the world in an entirely new way. Impossible? Impossible nothing, for a prehistoric man, mechanized production: magic, controlling nature: impossible, making rain happen: not even heard of.

As human beings, we are born into a pre-existing world. Being born into a culture we inherit-words and language-we assume that words and languages describe this preexisting world. Because we think of language as something in response to the world or existing in order to deal with the world, language becomes a means to an end. It is a means to make sense of the world and to make sense of ‘why and how’ of things around us.

This paradigm allows us only one way of thinking and doing things. The world is separate from us that we exploit for our benefit. Things that are useless are treated as waste or dirt or pollution to be discarded. It only allows us for fixing and changing things to our advantage, things that are not working or not working as well as we would like them to.This form of thinking has logic of its own. Cities like Delhi come into existence as a result of this logic. Agglomeration and consolidation of production of goods and services allow for trade and commerce so that more can be produced with least bit of energy and increased efficiency. It results in production of waste and pollution. It also results in crowding-settlements where human beings are living in close proximity and high densities.

Therefore waste generated by industry and commerce, air water land pollution needs to be treated in order to keep human labour healthy, so that they can be productive and efficient. Close and high density settlements need to be kept clean and safe so that human beings will be willing to stay with each other. Clean and safe drinking water, cleaning of the streets or keeping the garbage off the streets is in order to maintain good health of the population so that they can survive and produce efficiently. Even the immunization programs and the nutrition programs are in order to ensure that there is a future generation of skilled and semi-skilled human beings servicing the economies of growth.  This is essential in order to keep the entire giant economy of the city and the nation operating smoothly and growing at 6% or 10% GDP.

This is the implication of language as coming into existance in order to deal with the world. It follows that how we use language will be limited to what this paradigm allows us to do– to fix and manipulate the world in order to control and dominate it. Is there an option?

The feedbacks you post are out of your willingness to ‘because in the matter’ of creating a better world through environmental actions. Thank you for taking time out to respond to the blog and sharing your lives with me. It is these little acts of patchwork that brings us together. Patchwork is a creative way of bringing different pieces of cloth to create a new design. It always begins with small pieces coming from different places and origins and combines to create a design. It creates a completely new design from the old, the discarded and the small. Similarly when a new a new world order gets created, the pieces of different actions from people in different areas of life come together.

Wanted to share with you a news item by John Schwartz in the January 28th 2010 paper of International Herald Tribune as what appears to be a beginning piece and part of this emergent new world order. “Kivalina an Inupiant Eskimo village (in Alaska USA) of 400, perched on a barrier island north of the Arctic Circle is accusing two dozen utility companies of helping to cause the climate change that it says is accelerating the island’s climate change”. They use the sea ice blocks are used to protect the town’s fragile coast from high wind season. But this year they could not do it. The relocation cost of this village could amount to $400 million.

The case is one among three major law suits filed by environmental groups, private lawyers and state officials against major utility companies. It is a difficult battle and federal judge dismissed their suit, but they are appealing the decision. The cases rely on the common law doctrine of nuisance, the same concept that allows the neighbours to sue one another over noise odor and the like, that interfere with the use of enjoyment of property. In the context of climate change these used to be dismissed as frivolous, not any more. Similar issues with drug companies as captured in the classic ‘Silent Spring’, Tobacco companies and asbestos industries in the past have yielded results.

But this is just the beginning. The pressure from such suits could become a significant issue within the next few years. Let us wait and see. Blocking the ice melt.

One of the news report in the newspapers today read ‘IPCC retracts 2035 alarm on glacier melt.’ The Chairperson of the coveted body, on behalf of 2500 best scientists from across the world, accepted on Wednesday 20^th January 2010 that it made a huge goof up in its fourth assessment report on climate change and withdrew its assertion that the Himalayan glaciers ran the risk of being wiped out by 2035. They took complete responsibility of the report being wrong.

It takes tremendous courage and integrity to come out and say that we made a mistake and face the consequences of that. Without the successful inclusion of all governments in the process of creating the climate change report by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) this could have possibly challenged the entire UNFCC report, related to climate change and its potential impacts. Already Industrial western world has been using the “glacier theory’ to flog India on climate change. Survival emissions from burning firewood and cow dung and wet paddy fields emitting methane, have come under criticism for potentially contributing to climate change. These emissions were linked to the seasonal ‘brown cloud’ over parts of India. These were used to put pressure on India to take stronger actions and take greater responsibility for the climate crisis.

How do we look at the goof up on the year of 2035 for Himalayan glacier melt down? Or can we be complete about it. We can say yes! It happened and look at what next? by accepting it, forgiving it and appreciating the new possibility for actions that opened up especially for India and China.

We are at the next level. New environment friendly energy production options, new possibilities of cooperation between nations through ‘debt for swap’ and CDM technologies are today possible that did not exist earlier. Let’s do it..while we still can.

Life is not about waiting for the glaciers to melt…it’s about learning to dance in the snow!

Popcorn ki khushbu, mungfali ki bahar,

Lohri ka teohar aane ko tayar.

Thodi si masti thoda sa pyar,

Aap ko Mubarak ho Lohri ka teohar

Happy Lohri!

Just received this SMS message from a friend. It made me wonder why we celebrate Lohri – a day that is on 14th of January instead of 21st of December, the winter solstice. This day is the only day celebrated according to the Solar calendar among all Hindu festivals. All the other festivals are celebrated according to the Lunar calendar. It is one festival that is celebrated in one form or the other throughout the country. In Northern India it is called Lohri, in Western parts it is known as Makar Sankrant. In southern India it is celebrated as Pongal

Here in North India, it is the celebration of the second harvest of corn, sesame and peanuts. It is traditionally celebrated around a fire by burning crop residue. In Western parts of the country, it is the celebration of the winter harvest of sugarcane, horse gram and wheat. In Southern India, it is the second harvest of paddy. Traditionally, it is the celebration of plenty and goodwill to all. Bonds of solidarity are established by exchanging sweets made of jaggery and sesame seeds. But it is still snow bound in the extreme north and is end of agricultural activity in rainfed regions.

21st December is the date on which the sun starts moving away from Tropic of Capricorn, towards northern hemisphere to make the days long and nights short. Because of the tilt in the axis of the earth while it orbits round the sun, the ‘Sun-set’ starts to be late but the ‘Sun-rise’ is still at the same time. So what makes 14th January special is that it signifies the beginning of early ‘Sun-rise’ in the process of expansion of the day time. What makes it interesting is that without the modern day sophisticated instruments and technologies, our forefathers knew it, calculated it, predicted it and celebrated it ritualistically.

It would be interesting to note what else happens? I noticed that the black birds called ‘swifts’ which usually fly late in the evenings are now more active during the mornings. They all gather in a row on thin wires all facing the same direction and sit on it not for more than a minute at a time. Anyone else wants to share any other observations unique for this time of the year? Please do contribute!

Your involved participation in the conversation on various issues and your pragmatic actions continue to inspire me to write the blog. Thank you for the continued encouragement, since a little over one year now. May this year be as inspiring to you as it is for me.

We all have our concerns about climate change. With the temperature of Earth likely to rise by two degrees over the next decade, the extreme weather events are likely to increase. The winters will be more severe, summers more hot and there would be more precipitation leading to increased flooding, droughts and severe cold. One major concern is to ensure that the human species is able to survive all this. We don’t here much about population increase now. We believe that all human beings, if given the right training and support, are capable of performing as efficiently as every other human being. Hence ensuring human capital by monitoring Human Development Index (HDI) is a commitment taken by the United Nations to which all the member countries are signatory. This is what we believe in.

Given this context, there is a need for governments in their areas of governance and at all levels to ensure that humans are adequately protected due to climate change related extreme events. Every society historically took care of their poor and their underprivileged through charity. So expecting the government to take on this responsibility should not be an exception but a rule. One of the implications is the need to create temporary shelters for populations displaced due to natural disasters.

In my neighborhood in East Delhi, the Yamuna River bed becomes available for almost 8-10 months in the year as agriculture land. This was traditionally used as grazing lands by the gujjar community. They claim user rights over it even today and rent out these lands to the agricultural labour, mainly coming from Bihar. All year round these labour grow vegetables and some food grains. But during monsoon these lands get flooded and the labour residing here get displaced. There is a retired Colonel from the Army who has taken on to support them. He ensures that tents are made available during monsoon for them when the river floods. I am sure each part of Delhi has similar examples of initiatives to protect the vulnerable from such extreme events. Do share with us if you are aware of such good efforts.

Every locality will need more people like the Colonel I have in my neighborhood and given the trend perhaps more permanent of these ‘temporary’ shelters to support climate refugees. There is a need for more and more local leaders taking initiatives to support their vulnerable communities and truly make a difference. Therefore, today’s headlines about MCD’s decision to destroy the night shelters that housed 250 people is truly disturbing. The temperatures these days is into single digits, a more humane approach would have worked better. No doubt this must have been pending for long, and what was done was with the best of intentions, just wrong timing.