Change Your Stripe

What do you think? We have PhDs managing the country. We have endless news coverage and talking heads. We have more institutions of learning now than at any other time in history. We have MBAs and MTechs running our businesses and factories. We have achieved unprecedented economic growth, and a place in the limelight. We cry ourselves hoarse about how wonderful we are, and how our ancient culture is overflowing with spirituality and gurus and what nots. And that a glorious future belongs to us, as a glorious past supposedly did.

Time to take a reality check.

We have found water on the moon, but are unable to accurately assess the extent of poverty in the country, or maybe we don’t want to.[i] Too inconvenient and embarrassing.

India spends less than five percent of the annual budget on children.[i] Try spreading that over 447 million people below 18. More than half a century after Independence, the percentage of underweight children under 3 is still high, at 46 per cent. An estimated 50 per cent of our children are malnourished. Recent news indicates that we have managed to push our children to the brink of despair, with 26 juvenile suicides reported in four weeks in Mumbai. All this and much much more, inspite of having good policies and schemes in place. Thing is, these are useless without good people.

Compare that with the military budget of a country that was led to independence by the apostle of ahimsa.

There are other issues. Consider something we take for granted, water. Sooner rather than later, we may find the words “water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink” becoming a reality. Many cities have rivers and streams running through them, which once provided sustenance to the settlements on the banks. Today they are little more than sewers and industrial drains. Jump into some of them and you are likely to bounce back. More muck than water. In some of our holiday mountain resorts, the sewage from hundreds of hotels is dumped straight into the river flowing down from the glaciers. What does it matter that the glaciers retreat? Maybe they are retreating in shame and sorrow at what we have done with their gift. There was a time in recent memory, when buying water was unthinkable. Now it’s unthinkable to drink water that’s not treated and packaged. Water crisis? Why should I worry? It won’t happen in my lifetime. Well, think again.

And what’s happening with water is happening with the rest of our rich natural heritage. Tigers are clinging on for dear life. These days a TV spot reminds viewers that only 1411 tigers remain. Population control gone wrong. Forests are disappearing. Even on a thousand kilometer long train journey, you hardly cross any decent jungle. This was not true just a few decades ago. Agricultural land is being ‘developed’ into arid concrete jungles. And then we complain of rising food prices, poor air quality and congestion. All this is happening at a time when there are endless ‘green’ campaigns, protection acts, sanctuaries, and et al. Pretty soon I suppose everything else will disappear, except the highly evolved homo sapiens. But with the rise of the homos, even this may be in doubt.

As never before, there is enormous evidence that the problem is not out there, with the others. It is with us as individuals and as a community. We point a finger at ‘them’, when three fingers remain pointed at us. One example is in our ideas of development, colored by our perceptions of the US and Western Europe. We aspire to be like them, even in skin color. Fairness creams and hair color are all the rage. As Ramaswamy Iyer puts it,[ii] while we “rightly blame the western countries for having pursued a developmental path that has cast a heavy burden of depletion, pollution and contamination on Planet Earth,” we then assert our “own right to embark on the same destructive path.”

It is all about greed and selfishness. It is not only the Americans, but also we Indians who want to consume and consume, and waste and waste, and not have anyone question this insanity. With all the talk of returning Indians, a record number of the natives have been outward bound. A frightened UK recently took steps to clamp down on the inflow. Like the western nations, we too are unwilling to do with less. Unwilling to deny ourselves. Unwilling to share. Even our spirituality is selfish. We want to be personally blessed, we want personal peace, riches, prosperity and all the rest. We are not our brother’s keeper, much less our neighbour’s.

Our greatest enemy is not out there. It is within. In the Mahatma’s much quoted words, we need to “be the change we want to see.” It is said that if the leopard could change its stripe, it would make the world happy. The reality is that not only the stripe, but the leopard itself is in danger of vanishing. Yet the world is not a happier place. It is our personal stripes that need to change, if the world is to become better. Otherwise, “Good bye Earth! Over and out.”  Pessimistic? Maybe. Realistic? Definitely.

[ii] Water, Aspirations, Nature by Ramaswamy R. Iyer, The Hindu, February 5, 2010