Why is Development always at the cost of Environment and People?

Well, can somebody please tell me how razing down an entire ecosystem (also called the Western Ghats) and building more than 400 industries, mines, SEZs, power plants etc in a narrow strip of land equal to ‘development’?  

Lots of money in a few pockets, yes. But development?  No way.

Why, u may ask. India needs more industries, more jobs, more markets, more money etc etc. Plus we do have to look after the ‘poor’ communities who live in the folds of these Ghats, don’t we?

Let me give you two examples and then I will let you decide.

In the Lote Industrial Area of Khed Block in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra, over 377 industries have been set up. Out of these, 177 industries are fully functional and 53 of these are chemical plants which have been using the Dhabol creek to dump its chemical waste in. Till a few decades ago one could find more than 120 varieties of fish from the river systems here but now none exists. According to local fishermen who once used to live a comfortable life, the creek and river system is so polluted that they themselves don’t eat fish caught from anywhere in the region. The pollution has spread to the fields where even the growth of alphanso mangoes has decreased. And these fishermen are traditional fishermen who have no other skills, hence no jobs in these terrible plants as well for compensation. So from a life of abundance, they are now struggling to cope.

                                                          (fishermen at the konkan coast)

Sindhudurg is a tiny strip of land, all of 5207sqkms just before Goa. It’s one of the 18 bio-diversity hotspots of the world and is an elephants’ corridor as well. For me, this place represents a perfect piece of paradise, a unique example of how humans and nature can live harmoniously each benefitting from the other.

Most villages in the region are self sufficient as they get everything from the forest and land itself. Their main sources of livelihood are cashew nut plantation, areca nuts, pepper and coconut. Vegetables, rice, millet, chillies, jackfruits etc is grown here for their own usage. The villagers here joke that apart from tea and sugar, they do not need to buy anything. And no, they do not cut down trees to clear land for farming. Instead, they look for flat land near water bodies or natural streams where they can farm. Cutting down trees is not allowed and each village has a sacred grove or ‘devrai’ where not even a leaf is plucked. Each grove has its own animal god as its reigning deity.

                                                             (a Devrai in Sawantwadi)

                                                                (Areca nut plantation)

The people of the villages have even demarcated areas for grazing of cattle in different seasons, so that a particular area is not overgrazed and gets time to regenerate. Here the forest is not owned by the state government but by the village community themselves. On an average, a village of about 350 members often earn around Rs. 1.25 crores every year. People here are well off, women are educated and all children go to school. Well, can anyone ask for more?

It seems the state government does.

60% of this tiny strip of fertile land with happy people has been notified by the state government as mining zone. There are 49 mining and 19 power projects planned in the region. Around 17 mines are already operational dumping waste in people’s farms and polluting crystal clear rivers, the regions only water source. The funniest part is that these companies (all of which have violated their Environment Impact Assessments) have approached the communities with offers of jobs!!! Why would anyone need a job when you are getting aplenty at your doorstep through nature.  

India has three main watersheds which provide water to the whole of the country. The first of course is the Himalayas, the second is the Satpuda Range in Central India and the third is our very own Western Ghats which provide water throughout the year to states starting from Gujarat to Kerala. The region is thickly forested with so many varieties of unique plants, trees and animal life that it’s virtually mindboggling. Yes, there are way too many people who are not bothered with what happens to these plants and animals. But you destroy this eco-system and the main sufferers will ultimately be us; because you are destroying a whole watershed region of the country.

Yes, mining and other power projects are required for ‘development’. But we as a country do not have enough integrity to distinguish between working for real development or just for money.  Each state government needs to think strategically about the future - of how much to take and how much to preserve.

On second thoughts, that might just never happen.     

A Fool’s Paradise:

Demographic Dividend.

How I hate the term.

To the uninitiated, this term was lapped up by politicians, economists and probably all rights based NGOs when they realised long ago that India can never be able to control the country’s population from growing despite setting goals. Taking advantage of the media brouhaha about the shining status of our country, they happily threw sand into people’s eyes by explaining how we are a nation of ‘young workforce’ who will lead the country to be the next superpower.
And we as a nation of gullible or rather hopeful lot, believed every word of it and happily added numbers to that ‘young workforce’.

If it were a country where all systems worked well, the rise in population could still work out to its advantage. However this is India, where most systems have failed, more than half its 1.2 billion population lives in rural areas and around 40% of its people are still poor, farmers who produce food for us are left with no food for themselves, children are still uneducated and grossly malnourished, youths have next to no option for any skill development or jobs, women are still not economically independent and old people have no safety net to live the rest of their lives with dignity. Now imagine adding more people to such a scenario.

Demographics in India is like walking on a knife’s edge...it’s just a matter of time when one slips and gets bloodied.  Anybody who doesn’t see it still, is living in a fool’s paradise. I do not understand the complexities of politics and economy, but as a worried citizen I feel that things will not improve unless we bring in drastic reduction in population growth, change in the way the country is governed and save whatever natural resources is left in this country. 

Our country’s wealth is limited and natural resources finite. The only person who seems to have understood this and its repercussions was Sanjay Gandhi. And perhaps we missed a great opportunity with him of setting things straight for this country.

There! Dear all (human) rights based NGOs, misguiding politicians and optimistic citizens, I have said it aloud and in the open.

Let the brickbats begin. 

A Rag picker’s Tale:

Five years ago, I had moved to Mumbai and was working in a media house. I used to stay in locality with lots of parks and greenery. The huge park right in front of our apartment was reason enough for me to go for morning jogs every day. After the first few days of setting my pace, I slowly started to notice the people around. But the only person who caught my attention was a rag picker.

He would wake up at the time I usually started my first lap. Every morning I would find him sitting on the same bench, after probably spending the whole night out in the open without even a cover. He could have been anywhere between 24 to 40 years of age, his unkempt look and dirty attire did not reveal anything. I would often wonder about his life. Where did he come from, how did he land up there every night? What exactly did he do after getting up? Did he go wash up and have chai or just go straight to work at the garbage dumps?

There was something about the way he sat after waking up, the way he would look thoughtfully yet distantly at the morning sky behind the tall buildings all around. In his eyes, I found so many questions from life and that restlessness which I knew so well. Sometimes I could sense a quiet acceptance. And every day before I could finish my third round, he would be gone. After a few weeks I noticed that he had stopped sleeping on that bench by the park and I could not find him anywhere. A few days after that even I stopped going for my morning jogs.

In those days, I had fixed views about rag pickers who went foraging in the dirtiest of the places, people I would be embarrassed of as a citizen of the country. Lowest and most unhygienic in the economic and social ladder, these waste pickers are actually doing us tremendous service – by not letting the cities get overtaken by plastics and other things we keep throwing everywhere without any care.

In India, almost 75% of the stuff that we use, from newspaper, bottles, cellphones, tv etc gets recycled…which is amongst the highest in the world. And this is mostly done by these waste pickers, which in fact is a big step in mitigating climate change. Apart from this, they save crores of Rupees of the city’s municipal corporations by collecting and segregating these recyclable wastes.  

My restlessness and questions about life eventually led me to my current work. For that rag picker, it probably will never go beyond the city’s garbage limits.   

The Chhattisgarh Dilemma:

The tagline of the small lodge like hotel that we stayed at in Kawardha said ‘Temple. Tribals. Trees. Tigers.’  Apart from the Bhoramdeo temple which is a smaller replica of Khajuraho but with tribal features, I’m not too aware of temples of Chhattisgarh. As for tigers, there are a few tiger reserves and wildlife sanctuaries on paper yet nobody knows anything about them. But what you can see everywhere in this state are tribals and trees. Lots and lots of them.

Carved out of Madhya Pradesh in 2000, Chhattisgarh now has 27 districts. Whether it’s for better administration or making politicians happy, is something which is debatable.  What can’t be debated however is the beauty of this state. Chhattisgarh is exquisitely rural and thick with trees. The forests and hills have largely evergreen Sal and Mahua; while the plains are filled with trees which are huge, full of character and gnarled with age and wisdom like Mahua, tamarind, peepal, mango, leechi, banyan and many more which I couldn’t recognise.

(a beautiful full grown mango tree)

Most of the tribals are abysmally poor with only a few options to eke out a living – like farming in land less than an acre, labour work and collection of tendu leaves, mahua flowers and sal seeds as per season. To give a perspective, the Forest Department (now regulated) pays Rs.100/- for 100 bundles consisting of 50 tendu leaves in each.

  (a tribal woman making tendu bundles)

Since our plan was to see the collection of tendu leaves (used for making beedis) which happen early in the morning (to avoid the heat) we decided to stay back at a village. After a refreshing bath in the open at night (as that’s the only time for women to feel comfortable) we had simple food cooked over a chulha and slept in the open. By morning the temperature had dropped drastically and I shivered under a cover wondering how much difference trees can make!

Early morning, we followed a few tribals into the nearby forest which was devoid of wildlife. What left me uneasy was the technique the tribals used to collect the leaves. They usually do not allow a tendu tree to grow and keep cutting it down...so that tender new leaves will grow. Often they put fire to the forest, so that from the ash new tendu plants will grow which will fetch them good leaves. Not surprisingly, one can hardly find any full grown tendu trees in the forests these days. The tendu fruit, a better tasting version of chiku is a rare find here. But if you stop the tribals from doing this, you take away their one source of livelihood; and if you don’t you let an existing forest get depleted.

(a hacked tendu tree)

Our next stop was Sarguja district which is situated in the Sarguja highlands, an extension of the Chotanagpur Plateau.  Replete with mythology as the place where Sita was kidnapped from, Sarguja is thickly forested and more beautiful than Kawardha. Here in the midst of a thick healthy evergreen forest we saw signs of a strange campaign run by the state forest department called ‘Bigre Vano ka Sudhar’ or regeneration of degraded forests. The forest nowhere looked degraded but was infact an elephants’ corridor and full of wildlife including bears. Looking closer, we found that most trees had cuts around the bark, a method used by the tribals to kill off a tree slowly. Things suddenly fell into place when we were told that the area was being surveyed by infrastructure companies and power plants. What best way to give away prime forest land than by killing off trees and declaring it degraded.

Chhattisgarh has an abundance of natural wealth which even the tribals in an effort to live a decent life, are forgetting. Tribals like Pahari Korbas who till now only lived in deep forests are cutting down trees to make space for agriculture and roads. A pristine land devoid of urban waste like plastic is slowly and surely headed for a similar fate like that of rest of India.

(a village inside a forest - full of natural wealth)

Just where to stop so that the tribals can have a better life and the natural wealth can also be saved is a huge task for all concerned, be it the government, the ngos, environmentalists or even its people.

Time however is slowly running out.

The (un)ordinariness of Mumbai:

A girl in a very short skirt and high boots walked down the crowded streets of Dadar nonchalantly. None of the street vendors who were sitting on the road even looked up to see her pass.

This was a scene way back in 1992, which as an outsider visiting the city had fired my imagination. Freedom to live life the way I wanted it seemed to be here in Mumbai. It took me around 15 years since then to finally find my way into this city. But when I came here I saw a city which was fraying at the edges and its people edgy and guarded. The riots of 1992 and a series of disasters after that had completely changed the fabric of the city. And post the economic boom of the 90s, people started flooding in leading to overcrowding, traffic, too many buildings, chaos, cheating and callousness. Like Elizabeth Gilbert mentions in her book Eat Pray Love, the word that described Mumbai had shifted from ‘carefree’ to ‘struggle’ over these years.  That scene and that carefree world is nowhere to be found anymore.

But despite that, Mumbai continues to hold its lure on many people, a pull which only an outsider like me will ever understand. The city still has the innate ability to draw you in, make you dream and virtually spin you around till it decides that it’s okay with you. The moment the city accepts you, it lets you be and lets you find your own warm corner or space.

And in the daily chaos and humdrum of regular life, you can still find hidden the warmth and remnants of a carefree life. A taxi driver who at 2 am will take the straight route to your home and quietly wake you up on reaching the destination;  a guy who will continue to hold his girlfriend’s hand standing by the door till the train picks up speed;  an old man who will buy a packet of Parle G everyday and feed the society dogs; a commuter who hurrying to catch a train stops to make sure that the tiny kitten is out of harm’s way; five hands that reaches out to pull the person trying to board a running train; or an auto wala who will defy the strike and backlash to ferry somebody in dire need.

One evening, I was waiting for the three young girls dressed in salwar kurta to get down from the auto. It was apparent that they were excited about something. After I sat down, one of them shyly told the auto driver to give her a call. A quick exchange of phone numbers and names happened post which they went away giggling.

I smiled to myself thinking of a possible romance unfolding. In a seemingly unfeeling city, perhaps all is not really lost.   

Living ‘inside’ the Earth:

I am not too fond of children. I would rather they stay at other people’s homes. Yet even I agree that all children should be given education, which will give them an opportunity to explore possibilities in their lives in future.

For the government saddled with various issues, education is the softest one because there is no controversy or opposition attached to it. All CSOs, citizens, officials, media, world are on the same platform. Yet it took the government more than 60 years to get it right.

Well almost.

The SC’s upholding of 25% reservation of seats across all schools under RTE (Right to Education Act) is being touted as historic by many and is also being seen as ‘the great leveler’. I am going to take a lot of flak from many people for saying this – but forcing 25% reservation in all schools for economically and socially poor students will not lead to equality.  

Social and economic equality as far as I see, exists in a utopian world....in the world of Any Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and not in the current world as we know it. There will always be rich and poor, intelligent and dumb, smart and lazy, powerful and marginalised people. Forcing one on the other in order to gain equality on paper is so not equal or even fair. All idealistic Communist countries have also failed terribly in this aspect.

Like Gandhi calling untouchables Harijan, like reserving jobs for SCs and STs, even this might lead to more widening of the gap than before (apart from creating monetary and social peer pressures on both sides). And though this seems like a good excuse for the government to shrug off responsibility in the urban areas, what about creating opportunity of good education for children in rural India where most villages have access to only government schools? And what about the rest of the 75% in urban areas?

 I have been to government schools in Mumbai where Std 8 students have told me that all living beings live ‘inside’ the Earth. So when a rocket is set off, the Earth parts and it goes into the sky! I have heard teachers explain to the students that only one Emperor Penguin lays an egg and the rest huddles to give that egg warmth!

Like all great laws of India, the RTE (Right to Education) also seems excellent on paper and has the possibility of turning things around if implemented correctly. But with school teachers who cannot spell BLACK, the future of the children with or without RTE does not seem too bright and with that the future of the country too.  

Because half education I feel is far more dangerous than no education at all.

Nature of Greed:

At what point in our lives do we say – that’s enough? 

Is it after you get your first house or going by the rate of inflation now, your second house? Or is it after you’ve stuffed your wardrobe with Gucci bags, Jimmy Choo shoes and Paris Hilton perfumes (eww!)? Or is it after your tenth trip to Milan or London just to buy certain products available there? 

I know of people who run up to Rs. 20,000 in credit card bills every month and still crib that they don’t have any money. I also know of people who own two or more loan free houses in Mumbai or Delhi and still say that they don’t have anything.  

A few years back, when I decided to move out of corporate life and take the plunge into social sector, I took up a job which paid me barely enough to meet my expenses (like rent, monthly household items, travel to office and saving Rs. 1000/- per month). I lived for a year without buying a single piece of new cloth, shoes or anything else for that matter and piled on my friends who happily (or so I would like to believe) took me out for movies and dinner. I would not like to go back to that stage of life (financially) ever, but those months made me realise how far ahead we have gone in pursuing superficial stuffs and in our greed to accumulate.

My work thereafter has taken me to many villages, some even in remote areas. Strangely, I have found that the poorer a community is, the more generous they are. If they don’t have milk, they will serve you black tea. If they don’t have tea leaves, they will collect money and get you a soft drink. They might not have bed to sleep but they will make sure you don’t sit on the naked floor. They might not get full ration from the ration shop but they will make sure you eat a hearty meal. And if anything catches your fancy like a piece of handicraft, cloth etc, they will immediately take it down and shove it in your hands to take home.

One foreign delegate visiting us had once asked me – why is that the city people are so serious and unhappy and these (village) folks are always smiling. Shouldn’t it be the other way round? 

When do we take a real DEEP look at ourselves and try and answer that question honestly.