Dr Manoj-Sumati R. Borkar
Urban India is in the news for its fast-deteriorating environmental quality. Despite the encouraging trends of national indicators of growth and development, the country has not been spared of multifarious assaults on its environment and natural resources, with progressive and predictable decline in the quality of our air, water and soil. As for India’s air quality, the recent NASA satellite imagery has drawn global attention by regularly showing the extent of haze spread over the northern expanse of our country, often extending well into Pakistan.
Apart from the industries, the Indian transport and agriculture sectors too contribute air pollutants. The significantly high GDP and per capita income of Goa grants to its citizens a higher ‘spending capacity’ and an average Goan household has a couple of two wheelers and at least one four wheeler. Besides the exhaust from high vehicular density on our congested roads, the post-harvest stubble burning in agro-intensive states undoubtedly contributes to the obnoxious toxic fumes that mix with the thick winter fog and trigger an epidemic of respiratory pathology across the nation during the winter months.
Any reasonable attempt to redeem the India of its ‘dangerously polluted’ status shall begin with a transparent exercise involving domain experts to understand the sources and quantify the environmental damage, fix responsibilities and have evenhanded corrective action on war
footing.
As always, prevention being better than cure; suo motto cognizance of one’s individual and statutory responsibility towards corrective action must be prioritized, rather than waiting for judicial intervention, blame game and buck-passing. Political rhetoric and opportunism has no place in a sincere desire to address environmental degradation; because environmental pollutants recognize no political leanings and jurisdictions.
One must realize that the basic life support resources like the air and water have no individual proprietorship across the globe. These are nature’s bounty that we have inherited from yester generation and have to preserve for the future citizenry. A cursory survey of the villages in Goa these days will reveal that farmers have started preparing the soil for a fresh cultivation, by burning the stubble of the previous season. This generates a lot of smoke that can hover over vast expanse and eventually rise to disperse. This smoke can combine with fog to form smog, which is an established secondary pollutant of the air. As a matter of fact pollutants travel a great distance in air and can descend far away from the site of their genesis onto an unsuspecting state or country anywhere in the world depending on wind character and meteorology. So essentially, the polluter does not always pay, or have to; and the ‘clean’ eco-disciplined countries may suffer from the environmental arrogance of the rogue nations that place economy before ecology.
A viable option could be to use the post harvest crop stubble for mulching or simply converting it into agro-manure as suggested by our ICRISAT scientists. Also, the stubble can be used as packaging material for fragile ware. Attempts have also been made to use stubble as biomass for power generation. These are alternatives that lessen the environmental costs and merit a trial in agro-intensive states of our country.
Of course India has no dearth of expertise in dealing with this menace of toxic smog; but what we lack chronically as a country is a coherent approach, a single central command for environmental remediation and an eco-prudent political leadership.
Any government that does not exercise its prerogative and responsibility of precautionary principle of environmental protection shall leave for its future generations, a part of the earth that is not hospitable and with compromised life supporting systems.
In India we are increasingly witnessing judicial interventions in ensuring environmental justice, which is a clear sign that in modern India there is craving to attain high benchmarking of progress, at the cost of our earth capital. This trend does not speak well of our governance models; that are based singularly on ‘Planetary Management’ world view. The planet is not a tradable commodity; but is a vibrant, dynamic living planet that feels the pain of our technology assaults. Resilience of our planet should not be used as an excuse to damage it irreversibly. Therefore, technology and management systems alone cannot bail the earth out of the present crisis. What we urgently need is a sense of belongingness to the planet, a feeling of collective responsibility towards it. We can’t demolish the very cradle that rocked us in our vulnerable infancy! Engineering could well be the fulcrum of progressive civilization, but it is only the understanding of ecology that will sustain our species and teach us to live in harmony with our natural resources! Politically, ecology is often misconstrued to be an organised domain that uses data to block development. That is so very untrue and unfortunate an impression, in fact ecology explores the dynamics of interaction between life and the environment on this planet and the ways to coexist!
Our emotions must translate into earth-friendly action. Public hypocrisy is a challenge to deal with. As citizens of our state, in our private existence we crave for the comforts of technology driven life styles and in public space we adorn ourselves with the cloak of environmentalists.
Such hypocrisy numbs our sensitivity towards our earth and its environment. The right recipe for sustainable development is to integrate economic development with assured ecological integrity.
It is possible to achieve this balancing act through a synergy and collaboration between planners, technocrats, politicians and ecologists. This demands a change in mindset and ice breaking between various stakeholders. In a small state like Goa at least, this experiment is worth a try.
