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Educating India's Leaders
From time immemorial learnings have been passed down from generation to
generation through customs, mores, songs, rituals and social values. Today
we label such education "non-formal" and in our haste to set an
entire nation on the path of modernity (not a bad ambition per se) we are
making a casualty out of traditional knowledge and ancient values of the
kind that respected forests and rivers and venerated all of nature. This
trend toward snapping our bonds with nature lies at the heart of that vital
national problem – resource illiteracy.
My personal interest in things natural, has brought me in touch with
hundreds of people for whom nature nature has always been the prime moving
spirit. This includes Baba Amte, Sundarlal Bahuguna, the late Shivram
Karanth (poet, litterateur and philosopher), Kailash Sankhala (the first
Director of Project Tiger) and scores of lesser known, but equally
knowledgeable individuals. It is at their feet, so to speak, that my own
education took place. It is from them that I learned to trust nature, flow
with its tide and bask in its reliability.
One of the rewards for my love affair with nature has been my travel to the
most beautiful places on earth. I must confess, however, that I struggle
with a continuous personal dilemma: to mourn the unremitting carnage
inflicted upon the natural world by 'resource illiterates', or to celebrate
the isolated havens that remain. Still undecided, I live out my vacillation
in a pollution-assaulted life in Mumbai, mercifully punctuated by frequent
trips to the high Himalaya, the forests of Bastar, the corals and
rainforests of the Andaman islands and the austere deserts of Rajasthan and
Kutchh.
As can be imagined, I find myself battling constantly with those who
conspire to destroy the irreplaceable natural wealth with which nature has
blessed India. Each time a dam builder calculates the value of a pristine
river valley on the basis of its timber stock, or a financier condemns a
turtle nesting beach by suggesting that locals would be better off as
waiters or watchmen than fisherfolk, I mourn the monumental lack of
education inherent in our planning process.
Rather than curse the darkness, however, I have taken it upon myself to team
up with others who share my values in lighting candles. That is my
contribution to education in India.
Quite apart from Kids for Tigers, the ambitious school contact programme
that Sanctuary runs with support from Britannia Industries Ltd., I have made
it my purpose in life to write three times a week for newspapers and
magazines and to travel and speak with audiences that vary from politicians
and bureaucrats, to educationists, scientists and even villagers (who are so
easily exploited by urban profit-takers).
To my delight, I have discovered that provided people are not talked down to
or taken for granted, they largely agree with the world view that people
like me propagate. Some are actually relieved to discover that we do not
advocate a return to cave-living to become environmentally friendly! Others
find themselves agreeing readily with us when we advocate that national
investments be made to enhance the efficiency of existing thermal and
hydroelectric power plants, before borrowed billions are invested in new
power plants. Or that over 2,00,000 running kilometres of decrepit rural and
urban road infrastructure be repaired and renewed, before spanking new
highways and expressways are planned.
As of now, Sanctuary is also busy working with those who advocate
that a moratorium be placed on new nuclear facilities, till someone finds
the money and the means to decommission the extremely volatile existing
nuclear power plants that will need to be mothballed within the next few
months and years.
Tragically, just as we were succeeding in convincing millions of India that
protecting the environment is the most effective way to guarantee the
quality of human life, 'resource illiteracy' again reared its ugly head in
the shape and form of a harebrained proposal to link India's rivers. This
will now take up our already limited time and energy and tear the nation
asunder in debates, demonstrations, arguments and protests.
Even as we prepare to do battle, I would be the first to admit, however,
that to those who do not understand the hydrology of the Indian
subcontinent, the promise of river linking proponents sounds quite hypnotic!
Proponents of river linking say that the excess water in Himalayan rivers
will be channelled to the peninsula, reducing the impact of both floods and
droughts; that distributing water equitably, through river links, will
resolve conflicts such as the Cauvery dispute and that famines will be a
thing of the past.
What they fail to explain is how they intend to perform the miracle of
dumping billions of tonnes of floodwaters from the swollen Brahmaputra into
the Ganges basin, when the Ganges itself is on a killing spree thanks to
runaway floods. Nor do they mention that incredibly more effective and
lower-cost alternatives, such as catching rain where it falls in small
impoundments and then releasing it for intra-basin use, have been proven to
be more practical and more economically and environmentally advisable.
Perhaps some anonymous mathematics, physics and geography teachers working
silently in a school somewhere are the ones destined to educate the Indian
cabinet about the sheer quantum of electricity required to pump water up and
over the Deccan plateau (which renders the scheme uneconomical and
technically flawed); or the fact that the proposed budget of Rs.56,500
crores could be better used to improve the life of every man, woman and
child in India.
It is not as though every powerful leader is ignorant. The Minister for
Environment and Forests, Mr. T.R. Baalu had this to say in his capacity as
Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Indian Board for Wildlife, on
February 26, 2002: "We cannot allow the Renuka Sanctuary to be drowned
in Himachal Pradesh to bring water all the way to New Delhi. The Capital
should instead harvest rain on rooftops and clean up the Yamuna to cater to
its own expanding water needs. The project stands rejected."
If every state government in India were to follow Mr. Baalu's sage advice
diligently, most of India's water problems could be solved. And what
magnificent national purpose would emerge – with citizens young and old
uniting across India to restore life to polluted lakes and rivers,
protecting forests to reduce siltation into reservoirs, undertaking
programmes to deepen tanks and restore traditional water harvesting
structures. An amazing side benefit of these endeavours would be the up
springing of biodiversity as insects, plants, birds and mammals profited
from hospitatlity instead of hostility from humans.
Now that's what I would call real education.
Courtesy http://www.sanctuaryasia.com
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