Mood:  chillin'

If there is a Google to check the most asked question in Mumbai today it is this: what makes the latest terror attacks in Mumbai different from the earlier ones? There are several hypotheses and innuendoes to explain why the government has sat up to take notice and introduced a slew of measures to combat further attacks. The remarkable thing is the international reaction which is so unusually pro-India this time round. Earlier terror attacks in Mumbai have been more gruesome, taking a much wider toll in terms of the number of dead and the injured. But Pakistan made a huge mistake this time if they thought that the reaction in India and abroad would be tepid.

First and foremost, the 24x7 news coverage put paid to Pakistan’s complicity in the attacks, so much so that even if the terrorists enjoyed full media exposure for days on the end, the outrage in the world community, especially in the West, made sure that action against Pakistan would be commensurate with the outrage. Second, if Pakistan had presumed that attacking Israelis in Mumbai would only attract the same kind of indignation as that of attacking Hindus, they were terribly mistaken. The cruel joke that has gained most currency in Mumbai local trains is that Ajmal Qasab could have joined Bollywood and become a national hero like Sanjay Dutt if it weren’t for the attack on Jews. In all the former terrorist attacks in Mumbai the death toll always had been more than double of that seen in the latest attack.

The US all this while had only paid lip service to India’s pain for being at the receiving end of Islamic terrorism, but attack on Jews in Mumbai ensured that the US and western Europe demonstrably came on India’s side. The happy change in attitude towards Pakistan’s complicity in breeding terrorism has resulted in the United Nations banning Jamaat-ul-Daawa which is a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba. It should not be lost on anyone that banning a terrorist organisation in Pakistan does not mean anything, as the arrested people are free to move about to propagate and conspire further attacks on India. Pakistan should have learnt the lesson when a journalist of the Wall Street Journal Daniel Pearl was abducted and killed by what is now popularly known as non-state actors. The accused in that case was promptly booked and sentenced to imprisonment because Daniel Pearl was an American national.

Unlike in India where there is no value for its citizen’s lives, most countries in the West don’t take things lying down. It is always an eye for an eye. Pranab Mukherjee might fret and fume in the Parliament over Pakistan’s complicity in repeated terrorist attacks but would not forget to add the rider at the end of his speech: “war cannot solve problems”. The world is almost convinced that unlike Israel, India simply does not have the courage and the fortitude to take Pakistan to task.

On December 3, over one lakh Mumbaikars assembled at the Gateway of India in a congregation called by a local organisation to protest against Pakistan. The majority of the protesters that day, and that is over 70 per cent of the crowd, was made of college-going youngsters. The groundswell support that was evident that day on the streets of Mumbai had to be seen to be believed. Though most news media reported that people were angry against the politicians, the real anger was directed at our western neighbour. There were placards calling Dawood Ibrahim by four-letter words, even as slogans by student group were laced with the choicest abuses. Surely, that day offline editors in news channels had a hard time editing the footage.

All this only reflects on the growing impatience of people who want to see some substantial action. The growing feeling among the common people is that Pakistan has to be given a resounding slap on its face. The least that people had expected was an apology from our Prime Minister for mishandling the combat efforts. “After every terror incident all that our politicians do is to call it an intelligence failure. One wonders if this country has any intelligence at all, and the pun is intended there”, Sourav Das (name changed), a student of KC College told this reporter at the Gateway of India protest rally. The whole emphasis of the Indian government has been to ask the US to take action against Pakistan. People in this country are perplexed over the sabre-rattling and threats, for which Pakistan only shows its unconcealed amusement. Why is the Indian government so petrified about taking direct action against Pakistan. “There was not even a customary by-your-leave when the US attacked Afghanistan or Iraq to retaliate the terror attack on the twin towers in New York. The world community was a mute bystander”, said another student.

The reaction of the Indian government to terrorist attacks planned and executed by Pakistan has become quite predictable. It goes without saying that the death toll this time which included the CEO-types residing at the Taj Hotel has ensured that the government does not just give a fleeting look, make all the right noises of fighting terrorism and finally start counting Muslim votes when it comes to bringing tough laws to combat terrorism. The pressure being put by corporate India on the government to prevent any such future attacks by making all the amends in policy as well as execution may be subtle and under-cover, but it will certainly teach Pakistan that this time the worm has turned.

Posted by Anil Nair at 12:15 AM

Updated: Saturday, 17 January 2009 11:59 AM

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Last month Forbes magazine came out with a survey which listed Mumbai as the 7th dirtiest city in the world, while Delhi appeared not any better at 24th position in the filth list. Two years ago, the Readers’ Digest placed Mumbai at the top of the most rude cities in the world. There are even more statistics to compare Indian cities with global standards, which we will tell you in course of this series of articles on urbanisation in India, but the moot point is that infrastructure provided to citizens has a bearing on their life in a mega-city like Mumbai.

Recently, a website had collated the opinion of the Indian software community the world over, which gave an insight into the mind of the Indian youth. The large number of middle-class Indians who travel abroad for work, and even more these days on vacation, list out infrastructure as the root cause of all ills that plague our cities. The new cities that are coming up in tier II and tier III category because of the rapid growth in industry and subsequent urbanisation are no better than older cities in terms of utility services and planning.

A European CEO of a mall in suburban Mumbai was recently quoted in the press as saying that, in India the economic growth has skewed the development process. “We see all around us beautiful, swanky malls, multiplexes, restaurants and private residential complexes. They are better than the ones found in Europe or South East Asia. But once you step out of their precincts you witness the kind of infrastructure not seen even in the bottom pit of third world countries”.

The Forbes article on dirtiest cities in the world also allude to this fact. In the pre-1980s, there was abysmal economic growth in India. “During those decades the developed world was ignorant and indifferent to conditions prevailing in India. But today with record-high foreign direct and capital market investments the world has started to notice the prevailing irony of India’s growth story”, enunciated Manish Parekh, a real estate developer based in Mumbai.

After the private airline fares slumped to compare with train fares, passengers travelling by air and by air-conditioned trains have become common. The comparison today is between the well-oiled and near-perfect domestic airways system in comparison to the moribund railways.

The private airlines are employing the latest aircraft and technology but the railways are still riding on 19th century engines and coaches. The airports, despite the occasional jackal on the runway, are comparable to the best in the world. Most of the 3,000-odd railway stations in India look and work on a hundred-year-old technology which has been decommissioned all over the world. If you ask a train engine driver of the Indian raIlways, he would tell you that most railway engines do not have a functional speedo-metre, and the speed limits are followed more as a matter of guess.

The latest local train coaches introduced in Mumbai also have the same pathetic design which it had since Independence. Westerners, like the Mayor of London, find it astounding that local trains in Mumbai run at 120-kmph with doors open and hundreds of passengers clinging on to their dear life. In Mumbai, crowding in trains has reached epic proportions that many get killed during peak hours while holding on to the door panel when the train can reach up to 100-kmph speed. They are either ejected out of the coach by the surging crowd or hit by a passing electric pole. There are many who are run over while crossing tracks. The ways to reduce crowding in local trains are simple. There is solution to all these problems, but no one seems to be in a tearing hurry to solve them.

The new local train coaches in Mumbai designed in collaboration with an Australian firm and IIT have the same outrageous feature.

On the other hand, the newly-designed railway stations on the harbour-line corridor in Mumbai which connects to the satellite town of Navi Mumbai do not have any provision for escalators to help passengers cross over from one platform to the other. It is common sight in Mumbai to see old and physically challenged people struggling to climb steep flights of stairs.

“Infrastructure is creaky, but there seems to be a dearth of innovative thinking and compliance with international standards”, points out Sushant Pai of Suburban Railway Users’ Club in Mumbai.

According to him, even today there is no measure taken to prevent the average daily death toll of 147 people in city suburban railway accidents. Railway accidents are the biggest cause of death in Mumbai, more than disease and road and industrial accidents, especially in the young, most productive age group. The high death toll on the Mumbai railway tracks has been historically recorded since 1970s. What is alarming is the indifference of subsequent governments, both at the Center as well as the state, to the need for quick and life-saving emergency para-medical teams to reduce the death toll. Anywhere in the developed world these statistics would have brought the government down, but not in Mumbai.

Balasaheb Thackeray, since he started his Shiv Sena movement in the 60s, has been talking about an average 300 migrant families settling down in Mumbai everyday. But what has the state done to improve the infrastructure in the last 50 years to accommodate this growing population? According to Mr Pai, the demand for transport in the city has surpassed all the estimates of the railways. “The two rail corridors, viz: central and western railways, should have doubled capacity by having a two-tier railway system. This would have meant additional four railway lines to the existing four lanes. Every suburban railway station should have been redesigned on lines of Vashi railway station wherein there could parking lots and office space which could earn revenue for railways for expansion plans”, elaborates Mr Pai.

Migration of Biharis or south Indians into Mumbai would never have been a problem if subsequent governments had planned to improve infrastructure post-1960s. The railways do not even have enough rakes or coaches to meet the demand in city suburban railway, though the system is far from reaching its full capacity. If there had been one local train leaving CST and Churchgate every minute round-the-clock the living standard of the city would have improved remarkably. “Every minute a flight takes off from Heathrow Airport, which is the busiest airport in the world. So why can’t CST and Churchgate stations be able to expand and handle that kind of traffic?” asks Mr Pai.

Instead of taking to violence to drive out outsiders from Mumbai there should have been a concerted effort to improve living standards by investing hugely in infrastructure. Not surpringly, the most pertinent question posed at railway users’ meet is: what stopped governments from building infrastructure all these years. The drainage system in Mumbai is over hundred years old, and the municipality is still worked up over building a new storm drain system. Former Mumbai Municipal Commissioner Johnny Joseph has questioned the need for a new storm drain system. According to him, a July 26 kind of torrential rains occur only for a day in the year and the municipality need not spend a ‘bomb on such a project’!

Recently, an intrepid photographer of a city newspaper took pictures of over 370 BEST buses idling in depots. These buses have not been put into service for months now. BEST buses are idling in depots ostensibly because the cost of operations has shot up though the number of passengers using BEST buses have actually gone down in the last few years. People prefer to avoid using buses even on feeder routes because of the slow speed (average 15-kmph) of the buses, just as facilities, comforts and convenience of travelling by buses have come drastically down. Mumbai has lesser and lesser air-conditioned buses and there is no incentive or even an alternative for car owners to give up their personal mode of transport in Mumbai. The car pooling system has proved to be inadequate to ease the traffic congestion at many places in Mumbai.

Over-crowding in buses during peak hours often lead to verbal exchanges and fisticuffs among passengers which at times even involve bus service staff. There is no reason why the municipality or the government can’t intervene and put idling buses back to service. BEST has gone in for intensive anti-stress programmes for its staff with bus drivers and conductors joining the laughter club. But the solution to relieve stress lies somewhere else, which the BEST management and the municipality choose to ignore.

A few months ago there were riots in Kalva, near Thane, on the Central Railway line and a boycott of suburban train services for a day at Vasai on the Western Railway corridor because passengers find lack of rakes and coaches leading to infrequent services. Even during rush hours frequency often drops to less than one train leaving CST in ten minutes.

In the midst of all this last month Paris tourism department made a presentation to the media on how they are seeking more and more tourist population in Paris. When asked about how their city takes in huge migrant population without all the attendant infrastructural issues, the French representatives told the Mumbai media that Paris city managers constantly improve infrastructural facilities and keep increasing the target number of tourists which are expected to flow in. Paris today has only 34 per cent local citizens, the rest are floating tourist population. London is no different. Any Indian tourist will be shocked to find that there are more number of browns and blacks than whites on the streets of London.

Another instance of how world-class cities manage to increase efficiency and bring down wasteful expenditure is New York city. New York produces seven times more garbage than Mumbai does everyday though Mumbai municipality employs three times more personnel than New York state government does to clear garbage and keep New York squeaky clean. One wonders, why world-class cities are desperately trying to attract more and more people to their cities to improve their economy and tourism, while in India we are trying to single out ‘outsiders’, even as services and facilities are failing all around us. The fact is that no political party wants to do the hard work of improving infrastructure in Mumbai (or in any other city, for that matter) when they come to power, but would take the easy way shown by the Thackerays: intimidate people from other states and force them to leave.

Last time when Raj Thackeray and his goons beat up young boys from Bihar who had come to take railway exams at Kalyan station then Congress chief minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, who is a dalit, had unequivocally said that he was not against Raj Thackeray’s philosophy of son of the soil; he was only against the violence used!

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Posted by Anil Nair at 9:39 PM

Updated: Saturday, 17 January 2009 12:00 PM

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Mood:  cheeky

Subhash Ghai should be complimented for making a movie like Black and White. He has the courage to spell it out clearly that religious indoctrination is the biggest threat to mankind today. The film has a on-the-face way of dealing with issues that concern us most today — poisoning young minds with religious bigotry and consequent terrorism.
Black and White’s story is all about a Pakistani young boy Nomair Qazi (brilliantly played by Anurag Sinha) trained in terrorist camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan sneaking into Delhi on a suicide mission. His mission as spelt out by the Pakistani jehadi groups is to kill the VIPs attending the annual Independence Day parade at Red Fort.

He masquerades as a Gujarati Muslim under the guise of a riot victim. He comes from Pakistan loaded with documents to prove his Gujarati lineage. Black and White does not pull any punches on debates on Islam. Though several newspaper reviews have suggested that the movie gets preachy, the scene that opens the protagonist of the movie Anil Kapoor as Prof Rajan Mathur (a Urdu teacher at Zakir Hussain College) at a Chandni Chowk debate with friends is gripping. Being used to politically correct ways of dealing with minority issues a viewer is taken aback by the no-holds-barred opinion of one of the resident Muslims who argues that jehad is about killing the kafir for not following the Islamic tenets. Anil Kapoor is at pains to argue that such interpretation of Holy Koran is wrong.
The movie is so heavily nuanced that any ordinary viewer used to Govinda flicks would miss the central theme of Black and White. The gullibility of the professor and his wife (played by Shefali Shah) in trusting the Pakistani boy in spite of lurking suspicion and uneasiness is so realistic and unnerving. Ghai has been able to include several everyday issues in the movie that a believing Muslim confronts. Should women be involved in modern professions and work along with men, should Muslims make money in any business activities with non-Muslims, are political expediency and personal gains from teaming with Hindus legitimate in Islam, etc. The cut-and-dry dialogues stun viewers, and most viewers would liken them to real life situations in both Hindu and Muslim community.

Nomair Qazi during his stay in India comes across various facets of Islamic life which he always thought were black and white. India provides him with the grey shades and his mind starts to question the impracticality of practicing the jehadi version of Islam. At the end when Prof Mathur is held for sheltering a terrorist, even as Nomair Qazi’s friends kill his wife Shefali, he has a message for the terrorists that weigh in tones. If the Islamic terrorist groups abroad think that they can infiltrate into this country with jehadis who have skewed ways of thinking, then this country has the ability to convert them back into a modern, liberal-minded global citizens. Hope the message reaches the right quarters.

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Posted by Anil Nair at 9:32 PM

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Mood:  accident prone

When news trickled in at 6:50 pm on December 27 that Pakistani Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto is dead, there was disbelief and a sense of incredulity. Though GEO TV of Pakistan was the first in the media to declare her dead, everyone waited for the rumour to be squashed. The hope dissipated with every second passing until the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) spokesman announced her death standing outside the Rawalpindi general hospital trying hard to sound legible in the midst of overriding emotions.

If people in Pakistan as well as around the world had the wishful thinking that the news about her death would be proved wrong, they had good reasons for their concern. Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in a suicide attack just as she drove away from a campaign rally just minutes after addressing thousands of supporters. According to eye witnesses reports, she was travelling in a bullet-proof car but she had kept the window panes open to touch and shake hands with her supporters along the way. That proved fatal. The assailant first shot five bullets at her with a AK-57 rifle and then blew himself up near to the car.

Tragically, as it always happens at bomb blast sites, for a full ten minutes people did not come to the rescue of their leader from the car fearing another suicide bomb attack. She is reported to have died on the operation table at the hospital.

She was probably the most charismatic leader in Pakistani politics today, though she has never been relenting in her attacks on India and Kashmir. Over the years she had matured from her virulent speeches on army presence in Kashmir just as she was quiet on Pakistani occupation of Kashmir.

Her death has thrown the election campaign for the January 8 elections into chaos and even while going to press there were reports of mass protests and violence. Violence broke out in Lahore, Multan, Peshawar and several other parts of Pakistan. People burnt down banks, state-run grocery stores and private shops. Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf promptly blamed Islamic terrorists for the assassination. His words were brave: “This is the work of those terrorists with whom we are engaged in war”. But as Human Rights activist Asma Jehangir sorrowfully noted the culpability of Pakistan army in Bhutto’s killing itself is not far-fetched. The fact of the matter is that in Pakistan there is a thin line, often blurred, between local jehadi groups, army regulars and international terrorist outfits like Al Queda. The army can employ young boys from terrorist organisations to do its dirty job.

Bhutto’s death left a void at the top in her Pakistan People’s Party. US President George Bush’s anxiety at the fast developing events in Pakistan was not ün-noticeable. Speaking to reporters at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, a visibly worried Bush said that, “those who committed this crime must be brought to justice.”. Within an hour of the assassination President Musharraf convened an emergency meeting with his senior staff.

Benazir Bhutto, 54, served two terms as Prime Minister between 1988 and 1996. But in spite of her Kashmir agenda she spoke against militants’ overbearing grip in her country.

The most important question that confronts Pakistan today is: Should the elections be held? And if the elections are postponed what happens to the democratic process? Will the country sink into the quagmire of terrorism, religious fanaticism and anti-progress elements. Nawaz Sharif today is the lone Opposition leader and even he has suggested there is no point in holding elections when there is so much fear and threat to life. There are also experts who point out how Pakistan has survived worse crises, though democracy of any kind is too plaintive a system for a country that is ravaged by Islamic fanaticism. In the ultimate analysis, as Pandit Nehru had said: “It’s never the choice between the good and the evil. It’s always a choice between the evil and the lesser evil”. When it comes to Pakistan’s leaders it’s so true.

Posted by Anil Nair at 4:50 AM

Updated: Monday, 14 January 2008 5:04 AM

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Mood:  crushed out

The latest UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) report released last fortnight states unequivocally that man’s development and progress are responsible for the environmental degradation and the fast approaching doom’s day. The Global Environment Outlook 4 (GEO4) report from UNEP says that the factors for “environmental change include population growth, economic activity and scientific and technological discoveries. As these intensify, they exert new pressures on the environment, which have huge effects on human well-being”.

This is probably the best testimony ever to be made by a world body on how progress, technological and otherwise, that we sing paeans to everyday, causes the biggest damage to mother earth and will sooner than later, consume us all.

Years ago the Left had coined the term ‘Hindu rate of growth’ quite derisively to suggest that India in all its past glory of Hindu way of life registered zero growth rate, and for thousands of years had the same standard of life for its people.

For instance, a potter by virtue of his birth in that family would remain a potter just as all his ancestors down the line. This system of society was considered anti-progress, anti-technology and anti-modernism as the western lifestyle propagated furiously by the developed countries was the panacea for all ills. It had such an appeal for the western educated new breed of citizens that today technological progress is considered the only sign of success in the globalised world.

The UNEP report GEO4 though does not condemn progress, states that technological advances should be used to curb further damage to the environment, be it ozone layer hole over the Antarctic region, chemical pollution that now is considered the biggest source for carcinogenic material or various other facets of environmental degradation.

Further, the UNEP report says that the world has changed radically between 1987 and now, economically, socially and politically. “Population has increased by 34 per cent, trade is almost three times greater, and the average income per head has gone up by about 40 per cent”. All this in just 20 years.

To understand the gravity of the situation one has to just go through the 1911 British census conducted in undivided India. The total population then was 31.16 crore. But undivided India included Baluchistan, Burma and Pakistan. After discounting for the people living in these regions in 1911, the population of India at that time would be more or less 30.57 crore (it is difficult to come to a definitive figure for India from 1911 census as places like Punjab, Bengal and several other states have been partitioned).

This essentially means that since time immemorial till 1911 the population of this country didn’t go beyond 30.57 crore, simply because there was little growth, little technological advances and a way of life that was integrated to nature.

A stagnant population growth ensured that the number of births was equal to the number of deaths occurring in the villages. This in spite of the fact that Hindu undivided family was large—with a large number of children per married couple. But low or no growth in population also, most significantly, ensured that there were enough natural resources for people to live on, be it water, food, shelter, land to till and other requirements of life.

Between 1911 and 2000, within a span of 89 years India’s population burgeoned to over 100-crore from 30.57 crore. We might celebrate the largest market status in the world and all its attendant benefits, but will the planet be able to sustain our position and growth rate is the frightening thought.

A few years ago, a report in a leading newsmagazine Outlook said that the human gene pool in India has been considered to be the best in the world by the scientific community. The most important reason for it was stated to be the weeding out of disease-causing/ defective genes from the gene pool during thousands of generations; because only the most fit human beings survived. The Hindu health system assiduously kept away from treating life-threatening diseases like coronary heart ailment, diabetes, hypertension, organ failure, etc. which was prevalent even then. This only helped the following generations to get better and stronger genetically.

It can be argued that before the advent of modern advancements in medical research the situation was the same all over the world, not just in India. But it is undeniable that the Hindu way of life even during its golden period emphasised on a system of life which was closest to nature. The Hindu system of life encompassed almost every aspect of life—education, health and hygiene, music, dance, cuisines, farming and other livelihood, architecture, transport and god, what have you. Almost every sentence of the GEO4 report reaffirms the sustainability and importance of the ancient system of life prevalent in this subcontinent for an unknown number of millennia.

On the other hand, the latest report released by the International Energy Association (IEA) to the world media on Diwali day does not pull the punches. Even President George Bush bluntly put it that the energy crisis is triggered by the growth rate in the two most populous countries in the world — India and China.

“How China and India respond to the rising threats to their energy security will also affect the rest of the world,” said the Paris-based agency in its 2007 World Energy Outlook, which concentrated on the implications of energy developments in the two emerging economies for the rest of the world.

The irony of it all is pointed out by IEA Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka: “the rapid economic growth in China and India was a legitimate aspiration that would improve the quality of life of more than 2-billion people and that needed to be supported by the rest of the world.

“Indeed, most countries stand to benefit economically from China and India’s economic development through international trade”.

The world needs to act now to bring about a radical shift in investment in favour of cleaner, more efficient and more secure energy technologies, according to Mr Tanaka. But R&D in vehicle technology and fuel has often revealed that fuel efficient machines though save on precious petrol and gas, have higher CO2 emissions.

In the midst of the raging oil prices that is all set to cross $100 per barrel breathless analysts on foreign news channels are predicting “abrupt escalation” in oil prices before 2015. The fear is also that the increased demand and shorter oil supply will become more concentrated in a few West Asian countries.

Even as Indian newspapers report everyday about new gas finds the International Energy Association says that “although production capacity at new fields is expected to increase over the next five years, it is very uncertain whether it will be sufficient to compensate for the decline in output at existing fields and meet the projected increase in demand''.

Unsustainable land use and climate change are driving land degradation. This could bring about the biggest economic devastation on mankind, what with water scarcity, soil erosion, nutrient depletion, salinity, desertification and disruption of biological cycles. The per capita availability of freshwater is declining globally, and contaminated water remains the greatest single environmental cause of human sickness and death, the report points out. “If present trends continue, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity by 2025, and two-thirds of the people in the world could be subject to water stress”.

Global marine and fresh water catches showed large-scale decline because of persistent over-fishing. The report does not reveal how much has environmental changes led to drop in the seafood production. But the fact that over-fishing because of increased purchasing capacity of the people leading to bigger markets in fast developing economies should not be lost on global policy-makers.

“These unprecedented changes are due to human activities in an increasingly globalised, industrialised and inter-connected world, driven by expanding flow of goods, services, capital, people, technologies, information, ideas and labour, even affecting isolated populations”. UNEP’s desperation is evident when it says: concerns about global environment may have reached a tipping point of their own, with the growing realisation that for many problems the benefits of early action outweighs the costs.

It might be easy to mock at the Gandhian way of life of self-denial, living for one’s needs rather than one’s greed, wearing handloom clothing, abstinence of every kind, and strengthening the village as a self-sustaining unit, but the consequences of the alternative life-style as propagated by the West is driving us to the end of the world. The high growth of developed economies and industrialisation in the second half of last century itself had such a perilous effect on the fragile ecosystems the world over. Now the new emerging economies — India and China, could hurtle the planet to complete ruination. India and China could have also joined the developed world’s club without having to create so much environmental damage beyond that tipping point only if the two countries had smaller population to bear the burden of development.

If India were to be a developed country by say 2025 then the scenario is not just frightening but also bleak for the survival of the planet. If every family in India were to own a car (many middle-class families after the new-found real estate boom and stock market surge own more than a car each) the number of cars plying on the road would reach the figure of 250 million! The same estimation would extend to other vehicles. Can we develop the infrastructure to accommodate that many vehicles, and does the planet have that much natural resources to provide for the development of India and China to a first world status?

It might sound stupid to suggest that we need to bring down our growth and abjure the western luxuries of life, but the effect of our insatiable quest for more and more resources to fulfill a resplendent consumerism can only be devastating. As Shakespeare once said, “but yet the pity of it, Iago! Yes, the pity of it all”!

Posted by Anil Nair at 10:14 AM

Updated: Friday, 21 December 2007 10:24 AM

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